Spanking Children Leads to Domestic Violence?

Written by Leah Campbell on January 11, 2018

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Over the years, spanking has been the topic of quite a few research studies.

Researchers have said the disciplinary tactic can increase mental illness, make children more aggressive later in life, and even lead to less gray matter in a child’s brain.

The latest research, published in The Journal of Pediatrics, concludes that children who have been spanked have an increased risk of becoming perpetrators of domestic violence in adulthood. This increase was found even when control

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“physical violence typically results in fear. Which may stop a child from repeating the behavior. They’re afraid, so they avoid engaging in whatever challenging behavior it was that produced that fear. But you aren’t actually teaching the child anything. Even if you add a conversation after the spanking, as an adult, you’re modeling physical violence as a means to an end to get a child to change their behavior. We need to think about the message that sends kids: Hitting can be used to get someone else to do what you want.”

Instead, she says, “Parents need to teach their kids to have better emotional control. And they teach that by modeling it themselves.”

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tags: child abuse