We believe all parents need to take the time to know more about the impact of corporal punishment and the negative impact it has on children.

Like many parents, we were largely unaware of the amount of research on this topic until we read the National Library of Medicine article, “More Harm Than Good: A Summary of Scientific Research on the Intended and Unintended Effects of Corporal Punishment on Children.” This article significantly expanded our understanding of parenting practices.

We are assuming that almost all of the parents who are reading this do not use physical punishment consistently, but we think it is important for parents to be aware of and understand the effects of physical punishment. We will highlight the consistent findings from this article because they are important for all parents to study and consider as they grow their parenting skills. If you are interested, please read the entire article here.

The first thing that we learned was that

“…the term corporal punishment signifies non-injurious, openhanded hitting with the intention of modifying child behavior. The terms corporal punishment and physical punishment are synonymous: “physical punishment” is more commonly used among parents in the United States; “corporal punishment” is commonly used internationally and is used in the United States by teachers, principals, and policymakers. Parents tend to use a number of euphemisms to refer to punishment that involves striking their child, including “spank,” “smack,” “slap,” “pop,” “beat,” “paddle,” “punch,” “whup” or “whip,” and “hit.” “Spanking” is the term used most commonly in the United States and typically refers to hitting a child on his or her buttocks with an open hand, although some parents may include hitting with objects in their definition of spanking.” ¹

The next thing we found was that trauma is a

“…common psychological defense our mind uses to act out the hurt we’ve experienced at the hands of others by perpetrating it on other people later, even with those we love. This occurs when we haven’t become aware of our painful feelings or fully examined them.

“Trauma experts explain why this happens. Children depend on the adults around them for survival. This dependency takes the form of attachment. When children experience pain from the person who’s supposed to keep them safe, it’s one of the worst kinds of harm they can experience. Their nervous system, designed to keep them safe, begins to get sculpted around the constant threat, creating brain circuitries that are vigilant, reactive, and dysregulated. At the same time, their attachment system needs to keep them in the relationship, so it devises all kinds of excuses: “It’s not that bad;” “I deserved it;” “It made me a better person,” etc. In other words, children dissociate from their feelings of pain and fear.” ²

“Hitting children, even for “discipline,” is a form of trauma. Some adults cling to the excuse that a single swat on the bottom, or one slap on the head, can’t be that bad, and is necessary to “teach them a lesson.” ²

“Is there any kind of hitting that works to change behavior? Researcher Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff responded, “There’s no situation where physical punishment is useful or necessary. “It doesn’t teach children to behave well. It’s not effective for reducing aggression, or teaching self-control or prosocial behavior, or any of the things ‘parents hope to teach children. It’s not effective in either the short- or the long-term.” ²

”Physical punishment is one of the most intensely studied aspects of parenting. Hundreds of studies over five decades have concluded that it’s harmful to children in just about every measurable way. Children’s behavior, emotions, intellectual functioning, and physical health all suffer.” ²

In 2016 research, analyzing 75 studies involving 161,000 children, three important conclusions were drawn:

“First, consistent with earlier research, the analysis found no evidence that physical punishment changed the original behavior.” ³

“Second, there were 13 significant harmful effects of the practice that all increased:

• • • • • • Poorer moral reasoning & childhood aggression
          • Increased antisocial behavior & externalizing behavior problems (disruptive or harmful behavior directed at other people or things).
          • Internalizing behavior problems (symptoms of anxiety or depression) and child mental health problems
          • Impaired parent-child relationship & impaired cognitive ability and impaired academic achievement
          • Lower self-esteem and more likely to be a victim of physical abuse
          • Antisocial behavior in adulthood and mental health problems in adulthood and alcohol or substance abuse problems in adulthood” ^{2, 4}

“Third, these outcomes were similar to the effects of childhood trauma. A landmark set of studies in the 1990s documented that exposure to certain kinds of childhood experiences—including physical and emotional abuse or neglect, sexual abuse, domestic violence, family mental illness, incarceration, and substance abuse—causes great harm lasting into adulthood. And the more adverse experiences a child has, the greater the impact. The effects include increased risk for serious physical diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and COPD as well as early death, mental illness, suicidality, lower educational and professional attainment, and even reduced income.” ²

“Brain imaging studies also show a link between physical punishment and trauma. In a 2021 study, researchers showed 147 12-year-olds pictures of fearful and neutral faces while their brain activity was imaged in a functional MRI (fMRI) machine. Compared to children who were never physically punished, children who were physically punished had greater activity throughout the brain when viewing fearful faces. They also had more activity in regions of the brain related to threat appraisal, emotion regulation, and evaluating the mental state of others. Importantly, the pattern of their brain activity was the same as children who had been physically abused. When children have harmful interpersonal experiences, they become hypervigilant to the emotional expressions of others, because fearful or angry adult faces can be a cue that something bad is likely to follow. This study suggests that children who are physically punished are running the same brain circuitry as children who have been abused.” ²

“Research like this may help parents understand that when they’re hitting their children, they’re causing fundamental damage to the child’s brain—not because they’re hitting them in the head. They’re hitting them in other places on their body, and it’s causing a massive stress reaction every time. And it gets worse every time it happens. That stress ramps up and ramps up and causes physical and mental health problems.” ²

Final thoughts: Realizing that old hurts from our childhood can make us unknowingly act in hurtful ways with the people we love, especially our kids, it is really important to stop this from happening. Knowing that hitting causes deep and long-term harm, like trauma, and affects how the brain grows, how people act, and how healthy they are overall, makes us want to choose a better way. Let’s promise to be thoughtful parents who try to understand our kids and use helpful, non-violent ways to guide them, so we can have strong, loving relationships and keep our children healthy and happy now and in the future.

Make a plan to use improved behaviors in all of your anger interactions with your child in the next week. Self-awareness and continual improvement are the keys to better communication. Effective communication requires patience, understanding, and a willingness to work together. Keep practicing, celebrate successes, and focus on building a strong, connected relationship with your child.

Here are the main documents that you might consider reading to add to what we have shared on this topic.

Managing Anger Ideas for parents – Raisingchildren.net.au, July 2022

Psychology Today: How to handle your anger at your Child by Laura Markham, May 11, 2016

Center for Effective Parenting, Parent/Child Communication by Kristin Zolten & Nicholas Long, 2006

Why Parents Really Get Angry at Their Kids by Steven Stosny, Ph.D. in Psychology Today, August 7, 2015. 

Hitting Children Leads to Trauma, Not Better Behavior, by Diana Divecha, Ph.D, in DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, February 10, 2022.

If you want to learn more, google topics like these:
“Videos: How parents can learn about controlling their anger when they are angry with their child’s behavior”
“Articles: How parents can learn about controlling their anger when they are angry with their child’s behavior”

REFERENCES:
¹  Gershoff, E. T. (2010). More harm than good: A summary of scientific research on the intended and unintended effects of corporal punishment on children. Law and contemporary problems. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8386132/
²  Divecha, D. (2022, February 10). Hitting Children Leads to Trauma, Not Better Behavior. Developmental Science. https://www.developmentalscience.com/,
³  Gershoff, E. T., & Grogan-Kaylor, A. (2016, April 7). Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses. Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7992110/
⁴  Heilmann, A., Mehay, A., Watt, R. G., Kelly, Y., Durrant, J. E., van Turnhout, J., & Gershoff, E. T. (2021, June 28). Physical punishment and child outcomes: A narrative review of prospective studies. Lancet (London, England). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8612122/