I don't like it [I Hate Getting Swats From A Paddle]

@BetweenKittensandRiots Actually, those studies aren't remotely science. They are flawed in fundamental ways. Anything from drawing a conclusion by only studying sociopaths to false, baseless, "equivalencies" not backed up by evidence, they're chock full of nonsense. These people start out with a thesis rather than a hypothesis, figure out a methodology to cherrypick facts supporting it, feed "science" to a lazy public, & feel proud that they "proved" their conclusion.

@nickir https://skepchick.org/2016/04/the-science-on-why-spanking-kids-is-wrong/ 50 years of research.

@nickir https://web.archive.org/web/20160426182345/https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160425143106.htm

@BetweenKittensandRiots which coincides with the abandonment of actual scientific METHOD in favor of coming up with a conclusion & "proving" it. And yes, I'm tired of people coming up with flat statements backed by touchy-feely pseudo-science & wishful PC "thinking" too. I haven't seen a "study" yet whose flaws were not obvious.

@nickir More like You just don't want to accept responsibility for what you've done.

@nickir 160000 kids is not a small sample size. it's pretty much settled science that it's wrong.

The study, published in this month's Journal of Family Psychology, looks at five decades of research involving over 160,000 children. The researchers say it is the most complete analysis to date of the outcomes associated with spanking, and more specific to the effects of spanking alone than previous papers, which included other types of physical punishment in their analyses.

"Our analysis focuses on what most Americans would recognize as spanking and not on potentially abusive behaviors," says Elizabeth Gershoff, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. "We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents' intended outcomes when they discipline their children."

Gershoff and co-author Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, found that spanking (defined as an open-handed hit on the behind or extremities) was significantly linked with 13 of the 17 outcomes they examined, all in the direction of detrimental outcomes.

"The upshot of the study is that spanking increases the likelihood of a wide variety of undesired outcomes for children. Spanking thus does the opposite of what parents usually want it to do," Grogan-Kaylor says.

Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor tested for some long-term effects among adults who were spanked as children. The more they were spanked, the more likely they were to exhibit anti-social behavior and to experience mental health problems. They were also more likely to support physical punishment for their own children, which highlights one of the key ways that attitudes toward physical punishment are passed from generation to generation.

The researchers looked at a wide range of studies and noted that spanking was associated with negative outcomes consistently and across all types of studies, including those using the strongest methodologies such as longitudinal or experimental designs. As many as 80 percent of parents around the world spank their children, according to a 2014 UNICEF report. Gershoff notes that this persistence of spanking is in spite of the fact that there is no clear evidence of positive effects from spanking and ample evidence that it poses a risk of harm to children's behavior and development.

Both spanking and physical abuse were associated with the same detrimental child outcomes in the same direction and nearly the same strength.

"We as a society think of spanking and physical abuse as distinct behaviors," she says. "Yet our research shows that spanking is linked with the same negative child outcomes as abuse, just to a slightly lesser degree."

@BetweenKittensandRiots You just stated several flaws. One is that they WERE intent on linking abuse to spanking. Another is that they're using other flawed studies as evidence. Another is that there are easily observable positive effects from spanking, witness the incredible increase in bullying that today's teacher is powerless to stop. Yet another is the definition of spanking as including extremities. They obviously don't even know what spanking is, so how do they reach a conclusion. SCIENTIFIC method left us 50 years ago, when Americans decided that causal relationships were passé & that real analysis might make us feel bad.

@nickir no one was intent on coming to any conclusion. you're paranoid.[b] And if there HAS been a rise in bullying it's BECAUSE parents keep spanking.[/b]

@BetweenKittensandRiots Once again making MY point instead of yours. The increase in bullying coincides with LESS application of the paddle, not more. That's what we call causal. You DON'T get an increase in the behavior you're attributing to a particular cause when that cause is ameliorated unless that's a PC "solution" that of course doesn't work. The increase in bad behavior in general & bullying in particular should have gone down by 5/6ths since spanking has only 1/6th the occurrence now. However, bullying & bad behavior (especially bullying) are now combatted by clever lol Communist-style slogans (Be a buddy, not a bully) rather than consequences. So if these "scientists" were right, we wouldn't even need slogans because bullying would be a thing of the past, not logarithmically worse.