Spanking has effects on early childhood behavior similar to those of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as physical or emotional abuse or neglect, parental mental illness, parental substance use, and others, a study in the Journal of Pediatrics has found. Childrens exposure to spanking and ACEs when they were age 3 had statistically indistinguishable associations with externalizing behaviors at age 5, such as destroying their own belongings, being mean to others, or physically attacking others.
The results strongly suggest that spanking should be considered an ACE, lead author Julie Ma, Ph.D., M.S.W., told Psychiatric News.
With spanking, you are showing kids that it is OK to hit people if you would like them to stop what they are doing. Kids learn that this is an appropriate behavior, and it prompts them to become more aggressive, Ma said. If more [mental health] programs thought of spanking as an adverse childhood experience, we could then talk about adjusting social norms and attitudes and parental behavior.
Ma and colleagues analyzed responses from 2,380 families in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), which included children born between 1998 and 2000 in 20 U.S. cities and their mothers. Mothers in the FFCWS were interviewed in person shortly after giving birth and interviewed again by phone when their children were 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15 years old. Ma and colleagues drew their study sample from the interviews when the children were 3 years old, which assessed ACEs and spanking, and the interviews when the children were 5 years old, which assessed behavioral problems.
The researchers found that at age 3, 58% of the children had experienced one or more ACE, and 55% of the children had been spanked by their mother in the past month. Not only did spanking and ACEs have a similar association with externalizing behaviors in children at age 5, mothers who spanked were more likely to report externalizing behaviors in their children than mothers who did not spank.
Stop beating your kids folks. ---
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