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Humanist Parenting: One Safe Generation

ONE SAFE GENERATION is a humanist initiative to create a more humane, ethical, and reasonable world by breaking the chain of inherited violence and fear. Our goal is to make it possible for one generation to grow up free of violence. In support of this goal of "one safe generation" we are advancing initiatives to combat violence against children in the home, in the community, and on the fields of war.

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One Safe Generation: Corporal Punishment

Interviews

Interview with Elizabeth Gershoff, Ph.D.

Elizabeth Gershoff earned her PhD in Child Development and Family Relationships at the University of Texas at Austin and received postdoctoral training in preventive interventions at the Arizona State University Prevention Research Center. In her current research, funded by NICHD, NIMH, and the CDC, Dr. Gershoff focuses on the impacts of poverty, community violence, and neighborhoods on child and youth development over time. Her research combines longitudinal and hierarchical methods for understanding the dynamic and multilayered contexts of children's lives. Other areas of research/scholarly interest: school-based violence prevention, the impact of various parenting techniques on child behavior.

In 2002, during her time at the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University , Gershoff completed a large-scale meta-analysis of 88 studies looking at both positive and negative behaviors in children that were associated with corporal punishment. The results were published in the July 2002 issue of Psychological Bulletin.

While conducting the meta-analysis, which included 62 years of collected data, Gershoff looked for associations between parental use of corporal punishment and 11 child behaviors and experiences, including several in childhood (immediate compliance, moral internalization, quality of relationship with parent, and physical abuse from that parent), three in both childhood and adulthood (mental health, aggression, and criminal or antisocial behavior) and one in adulthood alone (abuse of own children or spouse).

Gershoff found "strong associations" between corporal punishment and all eleven child behaviors and experiences. Ten of the associations were negative such as with increased child aggression and antisocial behavior. The single desirable association was between corporal punishment and increased immediate compliance on the part of the child.

Humanist Parenting:   What led you to your current research emphasis on the effects of exposure to violence on child development?

Dr. Gershoff:  I had been interested in parenting affects on children since beginning graduate school, and the more I learned about how children think, feel, and behave, I began to realize that physical punishment went against everything we were learning in psychology about how to teach and motivate children. 

Humanist Parenting:   Would you say your ethical objections to violence against children drives your research, or that the conclusions of your research drive your ethical objections—or is it symbiotic?

Dr. Gershoff:   That is a very difficult question. For me personally, I began with the research. When it became abundantly clear to me that physical punishment was potentially harmful, and even potentially injurious to children, I felt I had an ethical obligation to make these research findings understood by as many people as possible.

Humanist Parenting:   Your 2002 meta-analysis is among the most often-cited research in opposition to physical punishment.  First, can you define a meta-analysis for those who are unfamiliar with the term?

Dr. Gershoff:   A meta-analysis is a method of research synthesis that statistically combines existing data to discern the average strength of the findings.

Humanist Parenting:   What is the best way to express the conclusions you reached from that analysis?

Dr. Gershoff:  The primary conclusion from the meta-analyses of 88 studies conducted over 62 years is that parental corporal punishment is associated significantly eleven child outcomes and experiences. Ten of these outcomes are negative (e.g., increased aggression, decrease mental health), and only one was positive, namely immediate compliance.

Humanist Parenting:   Are the use and approval of physical punishment declining (worldwide and/or in the U.S. )?

Dr. Gershoff:   Use of physical punishment by parents in the US has declined over the last several decades, although even now most (upwards of 85%) of children are physically punished at some point in their lives. Physical punishment in US schools has declined dramatically over the last several decades and is now banned in 29 states. Physical punishment by parents around the world appears to be declining, helped in part by the fact that 19 countries now ban all physical punishment of children.

Humanist Parenting: One repeated claim by advocates of physical punishment is that it is often needed to keep children safe.  The most common example is preventing a child from running into the street.  Is this the same as physical punishment?

Dr. Gershoff:  No. Physically restraining a child from running into the street is not physical punishment. Spanking a child after they have run into the street to show them what they did was wrong in physical punishment.

My retort to this issue is—why is the child in a position where they can run into the street in the first place? It is the job of us as parents to keep our children safe and teach them how to be safe when we can’t be by them physically. A young child running into the street is an example to me of a failure to instill discipline in the child and a failure by the parent to create a safe environment for their child.

Humanist Parenting:   You have noted the inherent limitations of research in this area, including the difficulty in designing experimental studies to assess familial practices.  Can you elaborate on that limitation?

Dr. Gershoff:  A true experiment involves randomly assigning people to an experimental and a comparison (control) condition. Random assignment allows researchers to account for all ways that people might be different from each other (race, religion, gender, etc). We cannot randomly assign children to families that will spank or not, nor can we even randomly assign parents to be spankers or not—people who are willing to spank are different from people who are not willing on several dimensions and so they are not comparable in an experimental way. 

Humanist Parenting:   Does this limitation preclude drawing scientifically meaningful conclusions about physical punishment?

Dr. Gershoff:  No. After several hundred studies on this topic that all converge on one conclusion despite different measures, research designs, samples, and eras, there is no doubt that more physical punishment is associated with more problem child behavior. We gain greater confidence in this conclusion from longitudinal studies, that account for how problematic the children are to begin with, and from intervention studies, that show that training parents not to use corporal punishment results in reductions of child problem behavior.

Humanist Parenting:   What is the best that can be said for the objections of Larzelere, Baumrind, et al?

Dr. Gershoff:   They have pointed out some valid problems with the research to date, particularly the issue that most research has been cross-sectional and thus does not support causal conclusions.

Humanist Parenting:    Do you think the physical punishment of children will ultimately go the way of sanctioned wife-beating and other formerly acceptable practices?  If so, what timeframe do you envision?

Dr. Gershoff:  Yes, I do. It took a generation to change attitudes about violence against women; I expect it may take that long to change attitudes about violence against children. Evidence from Sweden after their ban went into effect has shown that although adults have changed their attitudes since the ban, what is most striking is that almost no children born after the 1979 ban think physical punishment of children is acceptable.

Humanist Parenting:    If the physical punishment of children were to become the exception rather than the norm, what do you think might be the effect on society?

Dr. Gershoff:   I think it will be part and parcel of a more respectful way of treating children that can only have positive effects on them. Having children grow up with dignity and with respect from adults will likely increase their self-esteem and self-efficacy. I do not think we would see any dramatic decrease in child problem behavior, however, unless the reforms extended to many areas of children’s lives (schools, neighborhoods, etc).

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Organizations

  • Civitas

    Founded in 1993 by Jeffrey D. Jacobs, Civitas' charter mission was to educate front-line professionals working on behalf of abused and neglected children. With a planning grant in 1997 from The Irving Harris Foundation, Civitas explored ways to leverage its core assets to benefit a broader audience of adults living and working with children.

    Civitas' core mission is to gather cutting-edge research on early childhood development and transform this content into bilingual educational tools. These tools are then broadly disseminated to caregivers and professionals through a national network composed of not-for-profit organizations, government agencies, academic institutions, foundations and corporations.

    From the Civitas website:
    Most Parents Condone Spanking; Child Development Research Doesn't
    The effects of spanking are also confusing to most parents. According to the survey results:

    • 61% of parents of young children condone spanking as a "regular form of punishment" for young children, while research indicates it's detrimental to a child's development.
    • 37% think spanking is appropriate for children under two years of age. "These findings are surprising," said Ron Lally, Ed.D., co-director of The Center For Child and Family Study at WestEd, "given that while many parents condone spanking as a regular form of punishment, they also understand that this can lead to children acting more aggressively, and that it will not lead to better self-control." Lally added, "Why would anyone spank an infant or toddler? There is nothing he or she can learn from it other than to distrust bigger and more powerful people."

  • Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children

  • Project NoSpank / Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education

    PARENTS AND TEACHERS AGAINST VIOLENCE IN EDUCATION takes the position that children should no longer be excluded from the legal protections against assault and battery that apply to adults. Moreover, the defense of children should be more vigorous because they are more vulnerable; because the consequences of their early mistreatment are difficult to reverse; because damaged children tend to grow into damaged adults who are likely to avenge themselves in one way or another. If they will not harm others, then they will likely harm themselves, and they may passively support the mistreatment of children perpetrated by others. Current research in the field of child development overwhelmingly confirms the theory that the earlier and the worse the mistreatment of children, the worse the outcome.

    We believe that the information we offer to professionals in the healthcare and educational fields and to parents and other childcare providers by means of our Web site and printed literature can lead the way to a healthier and more peaceful society governed by the principles of nonviolence-based interactions for all.

  • Center for Effective Discipline / EPOCH-USA

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Alternatives to corporal punishment

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