John Gottman

If Adults Were Physically Hit Whenever They Did Something Wrong, My Guess Is Spanking Would Quickly Disappear

Gottman wrote a really good book called The Seven Principle of Making Marriage Work.

Getting Hit With That Paddle Look Like Fun, Yeah?

Over 10% of Children Reported Welts & Bruises From Being Spanked As a Child

John Gottman

I was pretty surprised to learn that someone close to me spanks their children. What's particularly surprising is that s/he was not spanked as a child, which makes their decision all the more puzzling.

Since I've become a parent (and in the year or so preceeding), I've done a lot of reading about children and in particular, discipline. Discipline turns out to be a pretty complex subject with it's own share of controversies, though one thing that's clear (or wherein I previously thought there was no controversy) is regarding spanking and discipline.

Numerous [seemingly endless] studies have shown spanking leads to both short-term problems in the children being hit and long-term problems as those children become adults, including (but not limited to):

• Long-term bad behavior (lying, cheating, disobedience, etc).
• Depression, anxiety and aggression.
• Adverse affects on adult sex lives.
• You're more likely to physcially abuse your children if you already spank them.
• Spanking affects women/girls much more profoundly than men/boys.

The list goes on and on ... as long as you care to look, there will be data on the negative long-term (and short-term) consequences of spanking children and the growing chorus of people who agree: The Harm Outweighs the Benefits.

Since so much has been written on this topic already, I'm going to excerpt two existing passages that help articulate the why behind problems stemming from spanking children.

Both excerpts come from someone offering alternative solutions of discipling your children, which is apparently all it takes for many parents to abandon spanking as a mechanism for disciplining their children.

The 1^st excerpt is about cause & effect, symptoms & behavior, etc ... which I think of as the tangibles of the discipline discussion. The 2^nd excerpt is much higher-level and concerns itself with the philosophy of discipline: What kind of a child do you want to raise and what qualities would you like to see your child have as an adult?

Excerpt #1 is from a book called Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child, written by John Gottman, who is known originally for his Love Lab and his work on relationship dynamics (in particular, in predicting whether a couple's relationship will survive based on watching the couple engage in conflict).

In his own words:

Another commonly used consequence of misbehavior among American parents is spanking. A 1990 survey of college students, for example, revealed that 93 percent wre spanked as children, with 10.6 reporting physical punishment severe enough to cause welts and bruises. While spanking may be popular in the United States, it is not standard among parents worldwide. Only about 11 percent of parents in Sweden, for example, report spanking their kids — a statistic many believe may be connected to the lower incidence of violence in general in that country.
 
Many parents who spank their kids say they do so because it makes their children obey. Indeed, many kids will do what they're told to avoid physical pain. The problem is, a threat of spanking works too well in the short term: It stops misbehavior immediately, often without discussion, cutting off chances to teach the child seld-control and problem solving. And in the long term, spanking may not work at all. In fact, spanking often backfires because it makes kids feel powerless, unfailrly treated, and angry with their parents. After a spanking, children are more likely to think about revenge than self-improvement. A sense of humiliation may cause them to deny wrongdoing, or they may plot ways to keep from getting caught the next time they misbehave.
 
Spanking also teaches, by example, that aggression is an appropriate way to get what you want. Studies show that children who are hit are more likely to hit their playmates, especially those playmates who are smaller and weaker. The effects of spanking may have a long-term impact as well. Research indicates that, in relation to the severity of physical punishment received, spanked children become more aggressive. As teenagers, they are more likely to hit their parents. As adults, they are more likely to be violent and tolerate violence in their relationships. And finally, people who were physically punished as children are less likely to care for their aging parents.

Gottman doesn't just proffer empty criticism — his book is an offering up of an alternate set of guidelines for disciplining children, which is the mechanism that finally causes those who abandon spanking to do so:

Although a vast majority of American parents use spanking, I believe most want a better way to respond to their children's misbehavior. Interestingly, studies of parents who have trained in other methods of child discipline show that once they find effective alternatives, they drop the spanking.
 
Families do better with methods of limit setting that allow children to keep their sense of dignity, self-esteem, and power. When children are given rules they understand, and a sense of control over their own lives, they are less likely to misbehave in the first place. When they learn to regulate their own negative emotions, parental limit setting and discipline are less frequently needed. And with fair, reliable allies in Mom and Dad, children are more open to mutual problem solving.

Excerpt #2 is from a Gottman lectured delivered at Seattle Town Hall on 2008. The complete audio is available here, compilments of KUOW.

In the lecture, Gottman^[1] raises a very important point (one among many^[2][3]) related to child discipline, namely: what happens after you've achieved the goal of having a disciplined child and how does this relate to your ultimate hopes/dreams for what kind of adult you'd like to see your child grow into?

Here's the excerpt, which begins approximately 40 minutes into the lecture. The only backstory needed is that Gottman apparently went down to his local Barnes and Noble one day and purchased (and subsequently read) all of the books on parenting ... which turned out to be around 50 books total:

In his own words:

Almost all books on parenting are about kids misbehaving, and about discipline. It's good to really figure out how to discipline kids, how to create consequences for bad behavior and rewards for positive behavior. So if you read all of those 50 books, most would tell you how to create obedient kids.
 
There's nothing wrong with cooperative obedient kids, we all want that, but most of us want so much more from our children:.

• We want them to be able to think for themselves, even disagree with us.
• We want them to become compassionate human beings.
• We want them to be moral people, to have a value system that we admire, to treat people well, to have good relationships with other people.
• To select somebody who won't beat them up, not get in an abusive relationship.
• To have good social judgement about their friends abnd lovers. To enjoy their talents, to explore their abilities.
• To be proud of themselves but not boastful.
• To have purpose and meaning in their lives, to have interests, and self-esteem.
• To really care about something, to live for something beyond themselves, not be materialistic, care about the welfare of the world.

And much much more.
 
And you cannot get that from these books on discipline. You cannot accomplish that by being a good disciplinarian - by being great at situations that involve misbehavior. None of those objectives are possible. You can get obedient or cooperative children that way, but you cannot get all these things.

My guess is that your conclusions on this subject were already drawn, long before you read this post.

Spanking is a very emotionally charged subject, one that I myself have a great deal of difficulty discussing with pro-spanking disciplinarians... mainly because the data is there: whether you want to read it, and understand it, is up to you, but the writing is clearly, unambiguously on the wall.

My own conclusion is that Gottman, in Excerpt #2, is more correct on the subject of hopes for our children than I had ever considered. I want those things for my children ... all of them and more, and to that end, I will never spank or hit my children for any reason. In particular, for girls, this is key to helping them reach the goals of choosing healthy relationships over unhealthy/abusive ones and to have a positive self-image and healthy self-esteem. Boys have their own set of challenges related to physical violence, mostly due to the way boys are socialized, but this is a topic for another day.