SBS 200 Module 3 Early and Middle Childhood Example

A Swat at the Birthday Party: Spanking, Culture and What Children Learn in Early and Middle Childhood

Student Name

Psychology and Addiction Studies Program, Aspen University

SBS 200: Human Development

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

A Swat at the Birthday Party: Spanking, Culture and What Children Learn in Early and Middle Childhood

At my nephew's seventh birthday party, he threw a piece of cake at his cousin. My brother took him by the arm and swatted him twice on the bottom in front of everyone. The room went quiet. My father said, "Good. That's how I raised you, and you turned out fine." My sister-in-law, a second-grade teacher, said quietly that hitting a child teaches him to hit. The argument continued in the kitchen for an hour, and it was the most serious disagreement our family had had in years. This paper takes up the question they argued about, whether spanking harms children, using research on early and middle childhood, culture and family. Every relative named here is drawn from more than one real family, and the studies cited are real.

What Children Are Learning at This Age

Early childhood, roughly ages two to six, and middle childhood, roughly six to twelve, are periods of rapid growth in self-control and social understanding. Children learn to manage frustration, follow rules and see situations from others' perspectives. In Erikson's terms, middle childhood centers on industry versus inferiority, as children develop competence in school and with peers. Moral reasoning develops from obeying rules to avoid punishment toward understanding why rules matter. How parents discipline children is part of how children learn these skills, and that is why the spanking question matters for development and not only for behavior in the moment.

The Case for Spanking

My father's view deserves a fair hearing. Many parents who spank love their children and believe that a swat, used rarely and without anger, teaches respect and stops dangerous behavior quickly. They point to their own childhoods and their own lives as evidence. In many communities, physical discipline is normal and expected, and parents who do not use it may be seen as permissive. Some argue that harm comes only from harsh beatings, not from occasional spanking, and that research mixes the two.

What Decades of Studies Show

Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor (2016) addressed these arguments in a set of meta-analyses that focused specifically on spanking, defined as hitting a child on the bottom or extremities with an open hand, and excluded harsher methods. Combining dozens of studies involving more than one hundred sixty thousand children, they found spanking associated with a range of detrimental outcomes, among them higher aggression and antisocial behavior, more emotional and behavioral difficulties, weaker cognitive scores, lower self-esteem and more strained bonds between parent and child. Spanking was not associated with any improved outcome. The associations held in longitudinal studies and in studies using strong methods, and they resembled the associations found for physical abuse, though smaller.

The finding answers the argument that research mixes spanking with abuse. Even ordinary spanking, as parents typically use it, was linked to worse outcomes.

Does Culture Change the Picture?

My father's other argument, that spanking is normal in our community and therefore harmless, is addressed by cross-cultural research. Lansford et al. (2005) interviewed mothers and children in six countries, China, India, Italy, Kenya, the Philippines and Thailand, about physical discipline and how normal it was in their communities. In all six, more frequent physical discipline was associated with more child aggression and anxiety. Where physical discipline was seen as more normal, the association was weaker. But children in countries where physical discipline was most common also showed more aggression overall. The authors concluded that cultural acceptance softened the link but did not remove it.

Following Children Over Time

A common objection is that children who misbehave more are simply spanked more, so spanking does not cause later problems. Taylor et al. (2010) addressed this by following about 2,500 children from age three to age five. Children whose mothers reported spanking them more than twice in the month before the age three interview were more likely to be aggressive at age five, even after the researchers accounted for the children's aggression at age three and for many family factors, such as maternal stress, depression and partner aggression. The design strengthens the case that spanking contributes to later aggression rather than only reflecting it.

The Evidence Together

Back to the Kitchen

My father turned out fine, and so did I. But research describes averages across many children, and being fine does not mean spanking helped. My nephew, at seven, is learning self-control and how to handle conflict with his cousin. What he learned from the swat, according to the research, is more likely that larger people may hit smaller ones when angry than that throwing cake is wrong. My sister-in-law's classroom approach, stating a rule, giving a consequence such as leaving the party for a few minutes and talking afterward about why it mattered, fits what children his age are developing: the ability to understand reasons and control impulses.

Reflection

Writing this paper changed how I see my family's argument. I had thought of it as old-fashioned versus modern. I now see it as a disagreement between two kinds of love, one shaped by my father's culture and experience and one by my sister-in-law's training. The research does not say my father is a bad parent. It says that, on average, children do better when discipline teaches rather than hurts, and that this holds in many cultures. I plan to share Lansford and colleagues' study with my brother, because it respects where our family comes from while showing why the habit is worth changing.

Conclusion

The spanking controversy in my family reflects a debate that research has largely answered. Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor found spanking linked to worse child outcomes and to none better, Lansford and colleagues found the link weaker but still present in cultures where physical discipline is common and Taylor and colleagues found that spanking predicted later aggression. For children learning self-control in early and middle childhood, discipline that explains and teaches serves development better than discipline that hurts.

References

Gershoff, E. T., & Grogan-Kaylor, A. (2016). Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses. Journal of Family Psychology, 30(4), 453-469. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000191

Lansford, J. E., Chang, L., Dodge, K. A., Malone, P. S., Oburu, P., Palmérus, K., Bacchini, D., Pastorelli, C., Bombi, A. S., Zelli, A., Tapanya, S., Chaudhary, N., Deater-Deckard, K., Manke, B., & Quinn, N. (2005). Physical discipline and children's adjustment: Cultural normativeness as a moderator. Child Development, 76(6), 1234-1246. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2005.00847.x

Taylor, C. A., Manganello, J. A., Lee, S. J., & Rice, J. C. (2010). Mothers' spanking of 3-year-old children and subsequent risk of children's aggressive behavior. Pediatrics, 125(5), e1057-e1065. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2009-2678