Spanking Toddler
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Spanking Toddler
Raising Kids
Toddlers & Preschoolers
Discipline & Behavior
Spanking
Spanking: Some parents swear by it, some swear never to do it. Which side of the fence are you on?Here you'll gain perspective from both sides about this touchy subject.
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Is Spanking Children an Effective Consequence?
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Verywell Family's content is for informational and educational purposes only. Our website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Ⓒ 2022 Dotdash Media, Inc. — All rights reserved
Verywell Family is part of the Dotdash Meredith publishing family.
We've updated our Privacy Policy, which will go in to effect on September 1, 2022. Review our Privacy Policy
Amy Morin, LCSW, is the Editor-in-Chief of Verywell Mind. She's also a psychotherapist, international bestselling author and host of the The Verywell Mind Podcast.
Ann-Louise T. Lockhart, PsyD, ABPP, is a board-certified pediatric psychologist, parent coach, author, speaker, and owner of A New Day Pediatric Psychology, PLLC.
Spanking is a widely debated topic. Most experts advise against using corporal punishment, but some parents believe that spanking is an effective discipline strategy .
Other parents admit they have occasionally spanked their child—especially when they were feeling overly stressed. Whichever camp they belong to, all parents need to know and closely consider the potential consequences of physical punishment, including spanking.
Sometimes, parents spank their children out of desperation. When kids frequently misbehave, parents may feel as though they are at the end of their rope and aren’t sure what else to do. Parents in these situations might say, “Nothing else seems to work.”
Without a consistent discipline strategy, it might feel like spanking is the best option. While spanking may alter behavior in the short-term, it rarely has a positive effect in the long term. Studies have shown that spanking is ineffective and is detrimental to children's development. 1
Parents may rely on spanking to "fix" behavior problems without trying alternative discipline strategies—or giving those options enough time to work.
Another common reason parents spank is out of exasperation, impulse, or anger. A parent who reacts out of frustration ("I can't believe you just did that!") might spank a child without thinking.
If you don't know how else to discipline your child, spanking might become the first line of defense. While it might feel like a solution at the moment, spanking won't solve the problem or teach your child better behavior.
Many parents later regret striking their children. Spanking can also cause lasting damage to the parent-child relationship. 1
Various cultural groups have historically held the belief that spanking is part of their upbringing and cultural background. However, the negative impact remains the same. Also, corporal punishment habits are the residual impact of colonialism that has been adopted by many cultural groups.
"Colonialism brought these domineering parenting practices to our cultures," says Leslie Priscilla Arreola-Hillenbrand, a parent coach and founder of LatinxParenting . "This isn’t a part of our collective DNA. There is some historical evidence of Black and Brown families being engaged with corporal punishment. However, colonialism brought many of those strategies."
In addition to being an inadequate solution to behavioral problems, spanking a child can actually create more harm than good. In fact, many studies have demonstrated that physically punishing a child, such as spanking, can lead to a host of issues. These potential problems include increased aggression, physical injury, anti-social behavior, and mental health issues. 2 Here is a closer look at why spanking is not effective.
A child who gets spanked for arguing with their sibling won't learn how to get along better in the future. Effective discipline teaches a child new skills and builds their competency and confidence. Spanking degrades trust and self-confidence, while only teaching a child what not to do.
Children do what parents do more than what they say. If you spank your child for hitting their sibling, for example, you're sending a confusing message. Studies have linked the experience of getting spanked to more aggressive behavior, mental health conditions, and other detrimental outcomes for the child (similar to the impact of being physically abused). 3
If they have been struck by a parent, a child might think, "I'm bad," and struggle with self-esteem, trust, and mental health issues. Children feeling shame are not motivated to improve their behavior and begin to feel that they cannot do better. 3
Hitting a child to modify their behavior tells them that they can't learn in a more positive way and don't deserve to be treated respectfully. Gentler discipline techniques are more effective while also building a kid's self-confidence.
Instead of helping your child think about what they could do better next time, spanking is more likely to make them angry at their parent . Kids in this situation begin to think in terms of “What can I do that won’t get me a spanking?” instead of “What’s the best choice I can make right now?” The spanking-avoidance dynamic can also encourage lying.
Sometimes, kids decide the misbehavior is “worth it.” They might even get "used to" corporal punishment, in which case it stops being a deterrent. A more effective discipline strategy includes understanding the reason for the behavior and having that conversation with the child in an authentic and open way. Punishment is about inflicting discomfort or pain, while discipline is about teaching and guiding.
If you have always used spanking to discipline your child, what will you do when they become a teen? Using physical punishment teaches kids that it's OK for the stronger person to hurt someone who does something that they don't like. Spanking employs shame and pain to discourage and punish rather than dealing with the root of the child's behavior. 1
According to a 2018 survey of pediatricians published in the journal Pediatrics , only 6% of the doctors surveyed endorsed spanking. Only 2.5% anticipated positive outcomes from the use of the discipline practice. 4 There are plenty of age-appropriate discipline strategies that you can use as an alternative to spanking throughout your child’s life.
Many discipline strategies are more effective than spanking. 4 You will want to consider alternative negative consequences that will reinforce your rules without hurting your child, such as removing privileges .
If your child colors on the walls, a logical consequence would be to have them wash the walls. This teaches them to have more respect for property. It also sends the message that their misbehavior will have consequences.
Restitution helps restore relationships and gives children the chance to learn new skills. The technique can be very effective for aggressive behavior and works well for children and teens of all ages.
Using praise to encourage positive behavior is another effective alternative to spanking. When you catch your child "doing good," make sure they know that you noticed. Kids tend to perform to parents' expectations. It is important that children's sense of self is not lost in parental expectations. Children need to develop a sense of pride in their own behavioral choices that is based on internal motivation, rather than external approval.
The goal of discipline should be to teach your child new skills that will give them the tools necessary to be a responsible adult. 4 Research shows that spanking is not an effective discipline strategy and has negative consequences—some of which can be lifelong.
When determining which discipline strategies to use, think about what you hope your child will gain from your intervention. Strategies like praise reward your child's positive behavior and build their confidence.
Gershoff ET. Spanking and child development: We know enough now to stop hitting our children . Child Dev Perspect . 2013;7(3):133-137. doi:10.1111/cdep.12038
American Psychological Association. The case against spanking .
Gershoff ET, Grogan-Kaylor A. Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses . J Fam Psychol. 2016;30(4):453-69. doi:10.1037/fam0000191
Sege RD, Siegel BS. Effective discipline to raise healthy children . Pediatrics. 2018;142(6) doi:10.1542/peds.2018-3112
By Amy Morin, LCSW
Amy Morin, LCSW, is the Editor-in-Chief of Verywell Mind. She's also a psychotherapist, an international bestselling author of books on mental strength and host of The Verywell Mind Podcast. She delivered one of the most popular TEDx talks of all time.
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Health & Medicine
How spanking may affect brain development in children
Health & Medicine
How spanking may affect brain development in children
Researchers find similarities in neural response to more severe forms of abuse
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By Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite Harvard Staff Writer
Spanking may affect a child’s brain development in ways similar to more severe forms of violence, according to a new study led by Harvard researchers.
The research builds on existing studies that show heightened activity in certain regions of the brains of children who experience abuse in response to threat cues.
The group found that children who had been spanked had a greater neural response in multiple regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), including in regions that are part of the salience network. These areas of the brain respond to cues in the environment that tend to be consequential, such as a threat, and may affect decision-making and processing of situations.
“We know that children whose families use corporal punishment are more likely to develop anxiety, depression, behavior problems, and other mental health problems, but many people don’t think about spanking as a form of violence,” said Katie A. McLaughlin , John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, director of the Stress & Development Lab in the Department of Psychology, and the senior researcher on the study, which was published Friday in the journal Child Development. “In this study, we wanted to examine whether there was an impact of spanking at a neurobiological level, in terms of how the brain is developing.”
According to the study’s authors, corporal punishment has been linked to the development of mental health issues, anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, and substance use disorders. And recent studies show that approximately half of parents in U.S. studies reported spanking their children in the past year and one-third in the past week. However, the relationship between spanking and brain activity had not previously been studied.
McLaughlin and her colleagues — including Jorge Cuartas, first author of the study and a Ph.D. student in education at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and David Weissman , a postdoctoral fellow in the Stress & Development Lab — analyzed data from a large study of children between the ages of 3 and 11. They focused on 147 children around ages 10 and 11 who had been spanked, excluding children who had also experienced more severe forms of violence.
Each child lay in an MRI machine and watched a computer screen on which were displayed different images of actors making “fearful” and “neutral” faces. A scanner captured the child’s brain activity in response to each kind of face, and those images were analyzed to determine whether the faces sparked different patterns of brain activity in children who were spanked compared to those who were not.
“On average, across the entire sample, fearful faces elicited greater activation than neutral faces in many regions throughout the brain … and children who were spanked demonstrated greater activation in multiple regions of PFC to fearful relative to neutral faces than children who were never spanked,” the researchers wrote.
By contrast, “There were no regions of the brain where activation to fearful relative to neutral faces differed between children who were abused and children who were spanked.”
The findings are in line with similar research conducted on children who had experienced severe violence, suggesting that “while we might not conceptualize corporal punishment to be a form of violence, in terms of how a child’s brain responds, it’s not all that different than abuse,” said McLaughlin. “It’s more a difference of degree than of type.”
Researchers said the study is a first step toward further interdisciplinary analysis of spanking’s potential effects on children’s brain development and lived experiences.
“These findings aligned with the predictions from other perspectives on the potential consequences of corporal punishment,” studied in fields such as developmental psychology and social work, said Cuartas. “By identifying certain neural pathways that explain the consequences of corporal punishment in the brain, we can further suggest that this kind of punishment might be detrimental to children and we have more avenues to explore it.”
However, they noted that their findings are not applicable to the individual life of each child.
“It’s important to consider that corporal punishment does not impact every child the same way, and children can be resilient if exposed to potential adversities,” said Cuartas. “But the important message is that corporal punishment is a risk that can increase potential problems for children’s development, and following a precautionary principle, parents and policymakers should work toward trying to reduce its prevalence.”
Ultimately, added McLaughlin, “We’re hopeful that this finding may encourage families not to use this strategy, and that it may open people’s eyes to the potential negative consequences of corporal punishment in ways they haven’t thought of before.”
This research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health
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Surprisingly, of all the hotly debated parenting topics, spanking takes the cake. It’s not very good cake either. The fact is, while both sides may have scientific sprinkles on their piece, neither side has enough. Parents, non-parents, and the bakers themselves could argue until they were sick, but in the end, no one would be “right,” in the justified, 100%, indisputable way required to call someone else a bad parent, and not just end up sounding like an ass. Personally, when my cake doesn’t have enough sprinkles, I opt for a brownie. OK, maybe I’m just hungry and you can forget the baked-goods analogy here, but the point is, I spank, and I’m still an awesome mom with remarkable kids.
It’s beyond me why in regards to spanking parents feel you must always spank or you must never ever spank, as if you may spontaneously combust if you veer from the typical disciplinary styles some likely over-priced parenting book presents. I spank my toddlers, just l
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