A moment of parenting stress sent Christina Erickson, professor of social work and environmental studies at Augsburg University, down a long road of research into understanding why parents spank their children and the negative impact the act has on all parties involved.
For Erickson, the moment happened on an uneventful day nearly 20 years ago. She was caring for her two young daughters, then ages 2 and 4, while making dinner and getting ready for an evening meeting.
“It was a pretty normal moment,” Erickson recalled. “The girls were being age-appropriately naughty, fighting over a toy.” But Erickson was busy and her patience was wearing thin. This argument between two small children was threatening to throw her and her husband’s carefully-calibrated schedules off kilter: “I became really upset and angry — more so than I expected. I went into the room to hit them. And then I stopped myself.”
Erickson had never spanked her children before — though she grew up in a family where spanking was the norm. Something about coming so close to hitting her own children made her stop and rethink the way she’d always viewed spanking, an act she later discovered a majority of American parents consider an appropriate parenting tool.
“In that moment I suddenly saw how absurd it was to hit these human beings that I loved so dearly,” she said. “I realized the contradiction in that I had lived my life as a person who wanted to bring peace to the world and make the world a better place.” She explained that the impulse to raise a hand to her children brought that self-perception into doubt.
“I was under that notion for most of my adult life until the moment I wanted to hit my two beautiful daughters whom I would take a bullet for. The contrast with who I was and what I did at that moment was really stark,” Erickson said.
Erickson knew she couldn’t be the only well-meaning parent who’d come close to spanking but then thought better of it. A former social worker, she’d assisted many families that struggled with violence, but she’d never made a clear connection between run-of-the-mill spanking and what she viewed as more egregious acts of abuse.
During her social worker training, Erickson interned at St. Louis County’s Initial Intervention Unit in Duluth. “They are the first responders, the people who go out and take a look at child-abuse reports,” she explained. She’d also worked on child-abuse prevention programming in nonprofits.
But even with all that experience, Erickson said, she didn’t make a connection with the kind of spanking (like a quick swat on the rear end), that many parents she knew and loved employed as a discipline tactic, and more damaging physical abuse, “until I wanted to do it myself.”
Erickson’s interest in the topic was piqued. She began researching spanking and its effect on families, eventually deciding to write a book on the issue. It was a long, all-encompassing project, and what she uncovered completely changed the way she looked at the practice. Her resulting book, “Spanked: How Hitting Our Children is Harming Ourselves,” was more than a decade in the making.
“I had a lot of evolution in my own thinking,” Erickson said. “Before, I was mired in the idea that spanking was a benign family discipline tactic that didn’t have big social impacts on a broader scale. But my research uncovered harms that were just too great to ignore.”
Bad for everyone
Like most Americans, Erickson considered spanking to be a normal, if not ideal, discipline practice that did little or no harm to children and their parents.
“I was spanked,” Erickson said, “and for many years I lived with the notion that, ‘I was spanked and I turned out fine.’ I felt that spanking is a benign family experience.”
In the early part of her research, Erickson tried to find clear definitions of spanking vs. hitting.
“I spent years trying to find exactly what a spank is,” she said, “to get a clear description of spanking. Do you pull the pants down? Do you keep the pants up? Do you hit one time or do you hit three times? How hard should you hit?” Try as she night, she said she could not uncover a clear definition of spanking, a fact that left her confused: “This leads me to believe as a social worker that spanking is everything from a swat on the behind to really vicious hitting.”
Eventually Erickson came to believe that calling most forms of hitting a child “spanking” covers its true meaning. “We veil a variety of hitting with that name,” she said. “There is much more diversity in that word than people imagine. It is so private.”
When Erickson talks to people about her research, their reactions further underline that truth, she continued: “People will often say to me, ‘I was hit. I wasn’t spanked,’ or, ‘I was spanked. I wasn’t hit.’ This is as if the two things are different. But spanking really is hitting. We have lost touch with the reality of what that activity is: Spanking is hitting a child.”
In her research, Erickson uncovered several studies that show that children who are spanked have worse outcomes on a number of measures than children who are not spanked, and the harsher the physical punishment, the worse the outcome. “There has been 60 years of research that shows poor outcomes for kids that are spanked,” she said. “That cannot be debated.”
The negative impact on parents who spank has been less researched, but Erickson was able to uncover some studies that show a correlation between hitting children, increased stress and loss of parental influence.
“Spanking has poor outcomes for parents,” she said. “What happens in a heated moment often is repeated over and over again. When you hit your kids you actually lose out on being the family leader, the hub of the family.”
An even darker scenario includes the involvement of the child-welfare system, she added. Many adults who interact with children on a daily basis — like teachers, coaches and even bus drivers — are mandated reporters. If a child mentions being hit by a parent in any way, these adults are required by law to report the incident to authorities.
“Many parents are unaware of the very ugly child-welfare system they are putting themselves at risk of being a part of when they spank their children,” Erickson said. “Many parents have a lot of fear that their kids are going to talk about being spanked. Spanking is usually done in private, but kids may say something to another adult, and then everything changes.”
Should spanking be illegal?
As her ideas about spanking developed, Erickson began to see its general cultural acceptance in a new light.
“We do not accept hitting in any other parts of our lives,” she said. “It is illegal to hit our spouse. We don’t hit an adult child or our older parents. This is the one relationship where hitting is sanctioned. Spanking does not respect the human dignity of children. This is sanctioned family violence.”
Spanking children is legal in the United States. Erickson’s new perspective on this fact inspired her to use her book as a call for making spanking illegal — something that has been done in many nations around the world.
“Sixty-five countries now have made all forms of hitting children illegal in every setting,” she said. “In the U.S., 19 states still allow paddling in schools. There are 65 countries that say you cannot hit a child in a school, in a residential treatment center, in a preschool. But in the U.S., Canada, Australia and England we still allow hitting.”
Countries that sanction spanking have different standards that define how the act can be done legally. In Canada, for instance, it is illegal to hit children before age 2 or after age 12. In the U.S., Erickson said, “you are allowed to hit your kids under the age of 18 as long as you don’t cause injury, laceration, swelling or bruising.”
This fine line makes Erickson uncomfortable. How does a parent, in an act of anger or frustration, control their impulses or their physical strength enough to avoid “injury?” And does the psychological harm caused by being spanked count as injury? Should it?
“I think of spanking as the gateway to child abuse,” Erickson said. “It opens the door to other physical things like shoving, hitting, body yanks, hair pulls. We point our fingers at awful parents who went too far, but we as a society have agreed that it is OK to hit your kids, to expect parents to make the judgment of their own actions. It is impossible to say it is legal to hit your kids but you can’t harm them.”
Erickson hopes that her book will help more people take another look at spanking and rethink the potential harm that even the most seemingly benign swats from parent to child can contain.
“I want parents who don’t spank hard enough to be abusive to still see the connection to the fact that other children are abused and spanking is still legal,” she said. “What I want people to see is that even if you aren’t from a legal standpoint abusing your kids, other kids are abused because hitting children is legal in this country. We’ve socially sanctioned it.”
She thinks that parents have an opportunity to learn from the words and phrases they’ve used many times with their own children. “What I said to my children over and over again was, ‘Use your words,’” Erickson said. “I realized I needed to begin to practice myself by having difficult conversations rather than by using force. It takes time and patience, but this approach can help parents in all parts of our lives.”
Amen. Spanking/hitting was my Mom’s default mode of discipline as a single mother with 4 little kids. She used any/every implement available, from her hand to a pancake spatula to her go-to weapon of choice, a hairbrush. The ordeal was always with pants down, and, believe me, bristles up or bristles down made a difference! As I got older, the practice made me angry enough to “run away from home” one evening when I was 12 (I got about 3 miles away before the police found me), and only after that incident was she convinced not to hit me any more. I made a vow, before my son was born, that I would not hit him under any circumstances, and half a century later, I can say truthfully that I never did. It appears – from grandparent distance – that he took my lesson to heart with his own two children. He yells more than I did as a parent, but I don’t think he’s hit them, and for that I’m thankful.
Can we hear from an advocate for corporal punishment? Bailiff, bring in Adrian Peterson.
I am the product of corporal punishment, including punch-outs at the dinner table. This bullying, obviously a passed-along feature of my parents’ childhoods, mysteriously stopped in high school, when I became physically larger than my father. I can still hear my sisters’ screams, when they were on the receiving end (whipping them, over the least little transgression, was my mother’s job). Should I even bother to tell you this happened in Texas? Oddly, both sisters now seem to consider both parents, since deceased, as sainted.
I’d be in favor of legally removing torture from parenting in all 50 states. But that view is the product of where I’ve been.
This seems to raise broader issues. Do parents otherwise have unlimited power over their children? Do children have civil rights? Do parents have unlimited power to scare children, for example, with sectarian religious beliefs? Now in the public eye, do parents have the unfettered right to prevent their kids from learning the facts about slavery and segregation?
Yes should be illegal.
I grew up in a rigid German community where ‘spanking’, which includes a wide variety of methods & devices, was considered normal. Animals were also hit & abused. Even as a young child I found all of it to be absolutely appalling & unnecessary. My sister & I weren’t hit but instead threatened w it often. So there’s physical abuse, and emotional abuse. Our brothers were assaulted near nightly as they got older. This deeply & gravely affected the family dynamics. Violence & abuse always do as they are signs of people pushed past their limits, who then resort to their basest behaviors. I did lightly swat my diapered toddler at times, more as an attn getting ‘refocusing’. Little kids certainly don’t know enough words to have a discussion…but I never felt good about it & quickly decided just picking him up to face another toy or diversion worked just as well. And we instituted a family policy of always discussing our feelings & apologizing if we ever hurt anyone’s. That worked well for years, til age 15. Teenagers are a whole other thing. One day I really reached & surpassed my limits and approached him w an arm raised. He looked at me and said: you don’t have a right to hit me. Point made, arm dropped. So we went to separate rooms til we were both calmer & could talk things through. Again. It is a DECISION one needs to make. Sometimes often. As are many things in life! And this highlights my complete opposition to citizens being armed: it is way too easy for seemingly large segments of the population now to whip out a gun, point & shoot…and ask Qs later. Problem is by then a person (or more) is dead & their family(ies) have to deal w that crushing, incomprehensible undoable blow. The same is true of wars. No one wins in a war. Ever. The effects, the devastation & utter destruction are a cost too high. These are societal issues that must be worked out by the larger society, starting w required parenting & anger mgmt classes. Moving on to equitable conflict resolution efforts in our schools. Then employing peacekeeping measures when dealing w other countries. The USA is at its best when it involves itself w humanitarian assistance & aid to others. Getting along w others is an important choice w long lasting ramifications that benefit the masses. It should never be about a tired, overworked, frustrated adult turning on a child, or an impotent dictator type acting out egregiously for attention.
I appreciate how you are linking war to spanking. I see it that way as well. Our species needs to understand their anger and that it is made of fear.
Again, one size fits all doesn’t work. First off no one can justify beating a child, we are talking spanking their butt or slapping their hands. Raising 5 children, words worked great with 3 of them, that was no problem. Very easy to discipline wrong behavior with words. 2 of the children were more challenging, they sometimes needed their bottoms and hands slapped to stop a behavior. If you grounded them it took weeks to modify their behavior, as opposed to a few words for the other 3. As a parent you are responsible for putting up guardrails that will keep your child safe and teach them how to be citizens of their community. Children are individuals and need to be treated as such. Children don’t come with operating manuals, it is up to the parent to figure them out and help them be as good of people as possible. Sometimes that takes a slap on the ass, sometimes kind words.
There is NO reason for an adult to strike a child. None. Period. All you do is teach then that violence is an acceptable form of social interaction.
What would be worse than spanking your kids? The State spanking the parents. Getting social workers involved would be worse for the kids than the spanking. But somehow the solution for everything these days on the left is give more power to the State.
Oh just stop. The rhetoric & bs are so disingenuous, as it making EVERYTHING political/partisan. I’ve lived in both blue & red states. I’m in a red state now & it continues to be a hellish situation in oh so many ways. The blue states manage EVERYTHING better, from societal issues to the environment to education to taxes to transportation to politics & everything in between. Red states still allow wooden paddles in schools!!!! Hello. They care little about the environment. They still treat their lying, fraudulent politicians like all knowing & all powerful gods, too. Never to be questioned or doubted. Why??? Because they are taught that mindless behaviour from birth to death. Control your constituents & you can get by w all sorts of diabolical schemes, like pushing fascism now and inciting a coup to overtake the federal govn (which they are taught to revile from Day One also). I strongly urge everyone to travel. To live in different places. To experience for themselves & to study all the many religions & cultures & practices of the 8 Billion others on this planet. It is eye & mind opening…. Guaranteed to change fixed perspectives.
That is a very elaborate response to my merely wanting to prevent giving the State ever more power to come between parents and their kids.
Until said parents cause the child’s death. Then everyone points at the state child protection agency and wonders why nobody did any7thing to stop it. How could they have been so blind and incompetent???
It’s a no win situation. People like you criticize them for doing their jobs, then when something happens, they’re criticized for not doing their jobs.
I thought we were talking about whether agents of the State should agents of the State should protect kids from parents spanking them, not killing them.
Clearly we have hit a glitch in the matrix
So there’s some kind of a continuum from a slap on the hand to a killing blow. Where is the line of acceptability drawn? Or can a line even BE drawn?
It’s not an easy or clearcut answer, and different people may draw the line at different spots. So – intervene, or don’t intervene? Or when?
If you’re going to accept SOME level of physical punishment against children, then you are also obligated to decide at what point someone needs to step in on the child’s behalf. If you wait until the child has been killed, then clearly you’ve waited too long.
William,
What are your thoughts on elder abuse? That is also a law aimed at protecting a vulnerable population that may not have the capacity to defend or protect themselves.
Many children have been convicted of elder abuse of their parents. Is that also the state getting in between parents and their children?
Or do you think the state should only protect parents when they hit their children?
My late father made heavy use of corporal punishment, and I absolutely despised it.
There is NO reason for an adult to strike a child. None. All you accompllsh is to demonstrate to a child that violence is a socially acceptable tool. Don’t like what someone is doing? Hit them.
Violence begets more violence.
Andy and Ms. Erickson, thank you for this article. It is timely for me because at age 61 years, I have had as a condition of my mother ever seeing me again my requirement that she go in for a personality evaluation and personal therapy, with family therapy to be paid by her.
I recounted to my therapist and to a 988 Suicide Hotline counselor on Sunday, January 8, 2023 the physical abuse I received from my mother and her second husband, who she married and divorced three times.
As a result of the physical and loud verbal abuse I received at my mother’s and stepfather’s home, I resolved to not marry until I was older than thirty-years old. I have never married due to the historic poor self-esteem I’ve had until distancing myself from her and finding a few really wonderful women whom I have loved as friends and lovers from mostly a distance of thousands of miles by telephone and Internet. One of those girlfriends raped me, which put an end to my dating thirty-five years ago.
Trust between parents and children, and parents and lovers, is at risk when abuse like hitting children are allowed to be practiced. I still recall my mom beating me with a wooden spoon when I was three-years old, breaking the spoon on my bottom, for my eating one chocolate chip cookie that my paternal grandmother gave to me one afternoon. My mom didn’t like that I ate it before dinner, which turned out to be inconsequential except for her animal behavior against me.
This continued throughout my childhood and teenage years until my dad, a former president of the Anoka County Bar Association, learned of both the abuse and my C- grades at a prominent public high school. He took me in for nine months to finish out my senior year in high school at De La Salle Catholic Hiogh School in Minneapolis — where my grades went from a C- GPA to being on the B and A honor roll and being involved with several political campaigns and meeting out neighbor at our workplace, then U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale. I was also evaluated and found that I have a high IQ and was a gifted student.
My turn around in school was so successful, as with my commnuity and school activities, that I was admitted to Macalester College, but had to leave after a year given beatings from dormitory mates from Minnesota. This said, I have a long history with Mac and have been a friend of one of its presidents, the late Dr. John B. Davis. Jr., for thirty-one years until his bassing on July 5, 2011.
Parents should know that their kids will not be part of their lives when they are grown if the history of abuse is significant. My mom has clear personality issues which I believe were brought on during the era of World War II when she was a child and my grandfather was in the Pacific Theater as a SeaBee. He worked on Midaway Island, a major ballte regionf for the navy and United States Army Air Force. She considers me to be disrespectful when I point out that she is abusive and has a history of very poor relationships and should go for help. So should many people. Roughly 20% of the U.S. population who have had the good sense to go in for an evaluation have one or more mental health issues, and they can be corrected with therapeutic conversations and medication.
Parents, if you don’t mind your kids having thoughts of suicide, possibly killing themselves, and also a life without them when they are adults — if they live that long, don’t consider ending your violent manner. However, I suggest adults — even those who got pregnant in high school and were forced to marry, as was the case for my biological parents, to learn patience and conversation as a tool of disciplining kids to learn how to play well. Taking toys away from kids who are really misbehaved may be an option, as well, but if this becomes necessary, please look at the family dynamics and possible mental health concerns which may be a product of genettic issues or as a result of environmental issues.
You either want healthy kids, or you really don’t care. If you don’t care, please place the kids in foster homes or have a former spouse take custody of them. I nearly died this weekend after another scene which my mom made and her chaotic and animal personality came out another of uncountable times in her life.
I will note that even with having studied in Europe and Latin America, as well as the U.S., and being mentored by two families who have billions of assets, I am still in poverty at my age given my difficulty feeling comfortable around people. I write and take care of orphans ni Africa, even with a low income from Social Security Disability Income payments. I have a good character, but am frightened to go out of my apartment after years of physical and sexual abuse from parents and others in the community.
Those of us who have been abused or neglected carry with us an ongoing project to set things right. We are doing the work that our ancestors did not do. One person being honest about their circumstances is one person making the world better. I wish that schools were better at teaching psychology. Starting young we would accumulate more tools to take better care of ourselves. I would also suggest that professional therapists need to be more accountable.
Not surprised the resident Conservatives disagree with conclusions made after years of study.
My father wasn’t a hitter, although we did come to blows when I was 16, he was very abusive verbally. That led to his being estranged from most of the family for many years. For my part I decided to try build some kind of relationship before he passed on. Luckily I started early enough to build something up over the last 20 years of his life. It meant not talking about certain subjects and doing things he enjoyed, but I’m glad I did it. My brothers and sisters had varying degrees of success at building a relationship with him. What I came to realize in end was the way his abuse toward us killed his dreams. When our parents finally split he moved to the Cabin he built on land my grandfather bought, as young children we worked on that cabin, we went there every other weekend but as soon as we were old enough we stopped going. He built the place up for children and grandchildren that didn’t want to go there because of his past and present abuses. He made plans for things that weren’t going to happen because of ill feelings and an inability to apologize. His dreams for his relationship with us were never realized, it was a very sad thing to see. I don’t know if any law could have fixed that, but I can see where stopping abuses can help both the abuser and the abused.
I’m only against the conclusion that parents who spank their kids should have the State step in and make the Trauma worse.
On balance, I see little reason to spank your kids. But there clearly is no gray area or limit here for the will to use the State to terrorize perceived enemies, as if the ills of the foster system are not well established.
As is often the case, Mr. Smith and Mr. Duncan are out in right field – Mr. Duncan in the right field corner. Patience and resolve are required to raise children, gentlemen. Just because you’re bigger and stronger, and CAN hit someone younger and smaller, doesn’t mean you SHOULD do so. And I wonder, is there no point at which Mr. Duncan might admit that it would be in the child’s best interest (and in the long run, in our own best interest as a society) for the state to step in to prevent further emotional and/or physical abuse?
Yes, it might takes weeks for behavior to correct itself without physical abuse. Are you so important, or your needs so pressing, that you simply cannot afford to wait for the child to figure it out on their own, based on the words you use? Your job as a parent is to raise functioning and contributing adults to the society, an outcome less likely if your children are nursing emotional and psychic wounds from being physically attacked by the person charged with their care.
Ray, you are conflating two things and coming up with straw men. No one is talking about beating a child, spanking a butt or a hand when a 5 year old won’t follow a basic societal norm is not that traumatic. When you tell an 8 year old 5 times to keep his hands off his sister and he won’t, a slap on his hand won’t scar him for life. When a 10 year old won’t pick up his room when told to do so multiple times a slap on his butt is extra motivation, not abuse. I think the last time I spanked one of the kids was when they were 12. After that grounding and taking away activities they enjoyed worked just fine.
As with most “one size fits all”, it doesn’t work, no matter how hard you try to twist a simple thing. I got the belt from my Dad plenty of times and I deserved every one of them. He was a great Dad and wonderful person who became a great friend too.
“When you tell an 8 year old 5 times to keep his hands off his sister and he won’t, a slap on his hand won’t scar him for life. ”
Or you may have shown that 8 year old child that a slap will make people listen to you and do what you say.
“in the child’s best interest (and in the long run, in our own best interest as a society) for the state to step in to prevent further emotional and/or physical abuse?”
The State getting involved should be the LAST option, when there is no other option. One does not heal a trauma by making a worse trauma. The writer even admits how terrible it can be for the kid and the family when the State gets involved, and then goes on to say, well, lets get the State involved, basically.
I’m not for spanking. I’m against people who think the heavy hand of the State is the answer for everything.
***No one on here even suggested that. *** You just have your own very limited world view about government involvement or control that you adhere to tightly at all times. You always bring it up. Always. It’s a rigid stance that you refuse to even loosen, let alone let go of. No one & none of us on here are ever going to change your mind/opinion. It is a waste of time to even try.
Millions of abused kids would like a word with you. In your zealous attempt at whatever act THIS one is, you basically admit in a roundabout manner, that you’re pretty much good with anything outside mortal injury as being within parental rights. One of your stupider routines, to be sure.
Many good comments here, this one not so much. My parents spanked occasionally, but they taught me never to call someone stupid…..
I don’t spank my kids, but was occasionally spanked when I was a kid and it was well deserved. Somehow I wasn’t traumatized and have a good life. That of course was before $200 a session for life psychologists seemed to have infiltrated everything.
In either case it’s clear that a lot of people didn’t read the article by Scientific American. Some conclusions made here are not as strong as they appear.
Some quotes from SA.
So the conclusion from the meta-analysis that spanking itself is dangerous might be overly simplistic. “I think it’s irresponsible to make exclusive statements one way or another,” says Christopher Ferguson, a psychologist at Stetson University in Florida.
And then there is the chicken-or-egg question: Are kids spanked because they act out, or do they act out because they are spanked—or both? Ferguson tried to control for the effects of preexisting child behavior in a 2013 meta-analysis he published of the longitudinal studies on this issue; when he did, the relation between spanking and mental health problems was much smaller than it had appeared without these controls in place.