No to spank-then-cuddle parenting practice: experts
Corporal punishment should not be followed by warmth and love; in fact it could worsen the resulting anxiety and aggression experienced by the child, according to a new study at Duke University in the US.
“If you believe that you can shake your children or slap them across the face and then smooth things over gradually by smothering them with love, you are mistaken,” wrote lead researcher Jennifer E. Lansford on the Child and Family Blog.
Dr. Lansford is a research professor at Duke’s Social Science Research Institute and the blog is the joint project of the Future of Children at Princeton University and the Applied Developmental Psychology Research Group at the University of Cambridge.
“Being very warm with a child whom you hit in this manner rarely makes things better,” she says. “It can make a child more, not less, anxious.”
In the study, Dr. Lansford and her team spoke about physical punishment with more than 1,000 children and their mothers, who represented a total of eight countries — China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Thailand and the United States.
She describes the findings as worrying because while maternal warmth can ease the impact of light corporal punishment in children between the ages of eight and 10, the anxiety and aggression fester, regardless.
Children from countries such as Kenya and Colombia — known for more authoritarian parenting styles –seemed to suffer less.
“Generally, childhood anxiety actually gets worse when parents are very loving alongside using corporate punishment,” writes Dr. Lansford.
She and her team aren’t sure why but say the combination of being physically disciplined and loved warmly might just be too bewildering for children.
The more severe the punishment, the more severely the child reacted with aggression and anxiety, according to the study, which cites 43 countries that have made it a crime for parents to apply corporal punishment.
Dr. Lansford concluded her research by giving ideas for parents on how to tackle the tricky terrain of discipline.
Teenagers, she says, should be obliged to participate in activities that benefit others and broaden their experience, while younger children benefit from time-outs.
The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology.
