Children who have been spanked by their parents by age 5 show an increase in behavior problems at age 6 and age 8 relative to children who have never been spanked, according to new findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The study, which uses a statistical technique to approximate random assignment, indicates that this increase in behavior problems cannot be attributed to various characteristics of the child, the parents, or the home environment - rather, it seems to be the specific result of spanking.
"Our findings suggest that spanking is not an effective technique and actually makes children's behavior worse not better," says psychological scientist Elizabeth T. Gershoff (University of Texas at Austin), lead author on the study.
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