Spanking and Child Outcomes: Old Controversies and New Meta-Analyses
By E. Gershoff, Andrew C. Grogan-Kaylor. Journal of family psychology, 2016
809 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Whether spanking is helpful or harmful to children continues to be the source of considerable debate among both researchers and the public. This article addresses 2 persistent issues, namely whether effect sizes for spanking are distinct from those for physical abuse, and whether effect sizes for spanking are robust to study design differences. Meta-analyses focused specifically on spanking were conducted on a total of 111 unique effect sizes representing 160,927 children. Thirteen of 17 mean effect sizes were significantly different from zero and all indicated a link between spanking and increased risk for detrimental child outcomes. Effect sizes did not substantially differ between spanking and physical abuse or by study design characteristics.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, General Health Professions, Safety Research
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0d03a2e9f085f0a268b4c0a52f5ac31c17a3e5f3
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Citations in the corpus
- Unpacking the impact of adverse childhood experiences on adult mental health (2017, background): “The effectiveness of spanking as a disciplinary practice has been ontested, as spanking has been linked with several short and long term detrimental consequences to children’s mental, hysical, and behavioral health (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016).”
- Perspectives on parent discipline and child outcomes (2017, background): “Although, in their meta-analysis, Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor (2016) found that physical punishment was associated with externalizing problems across all age groups, there are clearly age differences in how it is evaluated.”