Larzelere and Straus Debate
June, 1999

A summary of Larzelere's presentation in a debate with Straus about spanking. This debate was held at a conference of the National Foundation for Family Research and Education at Banff in Alberta, Canada.

Summary

This presentation summarizes the current scientific basis for a balanced middle position on child effects of nonabusive spanking by parents. There have been two major problems in research on parental disciplinary responses in general and spanking in particular. The first is the tendency to polarize viewpoints into all-good vs. all-bad options, rather than differentiating effective from counterproductive ways to use a wide range of disciplinary tactics. For example, cognitive developmental and clinical behavioral viewpoints tend to contradict each other on optimal disciplinary responses, even though they complement each other nicely on most other issues about parental discipline. The second problem concerns the causal direction of associations between spanking and child behavior. Even longitudinal correlations often fail to isolate the effects of spanking on subsequent child misbehavior. The original level of child misbehavior may have caused both the original spanking frequency and the subsequent child problems. This possibility is consistent with the fact that alternative disciplinary responses are more often associated with more detrimental child outcomes than is nonabusive spanking, compared to the reverse.

There have been 13 published studies and 3 unpublished studies capable of isolating the effects of parental spanking on child outcomes. Most of them (12 of 16) have found beneficial child outcomes of spanking under some important circumstances. Such beneficial outcomes are mostly limited to the use of nonabusive spanking to back up milder disciplinary tactics with 2- to 6-year-old children by loving, sober parents who are in control of their anger. When parents use spanking primarily to back up milder disciplinary responses, such as reasoning or time out, then those milder tactics become more effective disciplinary tactics by themselves. In this way, parents can work themselves out of the need to use spanking without compromising their disciplinary effectiveness. Beneficial outcomes have included reductions in noncompliance, fighting, antisocial behavior, emotional problems, and hostility.

In contrast, 4 of the 16 causally conclusive studies found only detrimental child outcomes of nonabusive spanking. The detrimental outcomes occurred almost entirely for children over 6 years old. The detrimental outcomes tend to be small, and do not apply to subgroups that view spanking as more appropriate and loving (e.g., African-Americans and conservative Protestants). Further, a replication of the best study found identical small detrimental child outcomes for all four alternative disciplinary responses for 6- to 9-year-olds available from the interview: grounding, sending the child to a room, removing privileges, and taking away an allowance. Whatever accounts for this small detrimental child effect, it does not seem to be unique to spanking, but may reflect overly frequent uses of any negative consequence (rejecting manner?, impulsive rather than loving discipline?, insufficient discussion?).

In conclusion, the current scientific evidence suggests that some kind of balanced middle position on spanking is preferable to either of the polarized extremes. Parents should resort to the mildest disciplinary tactic they think will be effective, and be open to mutually acceptable compromises negotiated by their children. But they should back up reasoning and time out when necessary, whether with a nonabusive spanking (appropriate only near the ages of 2 to 6) or some alternative (e.g., grounding). Parenting experts need to expand effective nonabusive disciplinary options for parents, not prematurely restrict them.

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