The Science and Statistics Behind Spanking Suggests that

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11-FULLER_FINAL_AFTERPROOF.DOC 2/17/2009 8:50 AM 292 AKRON LAW REVIEW [42:243 anything, like that ice cream causes depression. 257 Say a researcher approaches her study with a bias against ice cream. If she is like many child discipline researchers, she simply asks people questions like “Are you depressed?” and “Do you eat ice cream?” 258 When she finds a correlation, 259 she then concludes that ice cream causes depression, without testing that conclusion against clinical studies or alternative explanations. 260 Accordingly, she will never discover whether depression actually triggers ice cream eating, or whether something else causes both depression and ice cream consumption. 261 C. “Avoid the Insidious Evils of . . . Propaganda Favoring Particular Points of View” 262 At a 1996 American Academy of Pediatrics conference on spanking, Dr. Larzelere and others presented research showing that there is no convincing evidence that spanking harms children. 263 The two 257. See, e.g., DEBATING CHILDREN’S LIVES: CURRENT CONTROVERSIES ON CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS 215 (Mary Ann Mason & Eileen Gambrill eds., 1994) (“On the matter of studies that demonstrate a correlation between spanking and the later abuse of wives, children, and self, it should be noted that these studies—all of them—are characterized by design problems so obvious and pervasive as to send a graduate student of experimental methods into gales of laughter. For one thing, the self-reports of people who have run afoul of authorities because of such problems can hardly be relied on. For another, correlation is not a cause. For another, as every text on experimental methods will tell you, ex post facto investigations are next to worthless. For yet another, the authors of such studies cannot be accused of objectivity. In other words, despite the impressive bibliography, this isn’t science. What we have here is a shrewd attempt on the part of social policy activists within the professional community to use psychobabble and pseudoscience as the basis for law.”) (emphasis in original). 258. Cf., e.g., supra note 183 and accompanying text. 259. Cf., e.g., DANIEL MILLER, CONSUMPTION: CRITICAL CONCEPTS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 416 (“Ice cream has ‘great power to act as a substitute for the breast, to wipe out anxieties and depression.’ The physical sensation of eating ice cream, when ‘optimally experienced’, is so complete that it is capable of blotting out all other concerns.”) (citation omitted). 260. Cf., e.g., supra note 175 and accompanying text. 261. See, e.g., Dr. Kalman M. Heller, Is Spanking Harmful to Children?, available at http://www.drheller.com/spanking.html (saying “just because two or more behaviors may be correlated, e.g., children who are read to more when young have higher I.Q’s, doesn’t mean that one behavior, the reading, causes the other, the higher intelligence. That’s because many other factors could actually be the causal [ones] and need to be controlled for in order to conclude what is truly causal. In this example, factors such as the parents’ intelligence (I.Q. is at least partly genetically determined) and poverty (several aspects of growing up in very poor homes and neighborhoods result in poorer performance on IQ tests) may be the causal factors. Reading to children may simply be more associated with growing up in a non-poverty home.”). 262. FCC v. League of Women Voters of Cal., 468 U.S. 364, 409 (1984) (Stevens, J., dissenting). 263. See generally Larzelere, Review, supra note 17.
11-FULLER_FINAL_AFTERPROOF.DOC 2/17/2009 8:50 AM 2009] THE SCIENCE AND STATISTICS BEHIND SPANKING 293 pediatrics professors that organized the conference admitted that, before the conference, they “had a preconceived notion that corporal punishment, including spanking, was innately and always ‘bad.’” 264 By the end of the conference, they both realized that, “given a relatively ‘healthy’ family life in a supportive environment, spanking in and of itself is not detrimental to a child or predictive of later problems.” 265 This is common. Many people have a preconceived notion that physical discipline is harmful because most literature that opposes spanking is not only methodologically flawed, but also emotionally charged. 266 This can be dangerous because playing on emotions makes it easier to influence people, especially when the subject is as moving as our children. 267 For instance, Dr. Straus tirelessly manipulates his readers just by using the word “hitting” instead of “spanking.” 268 He never uses this tactic when his research links harmful effects to grounding, privilege removal, or allowance removal. 269 Dr. Straus never refers to grounding as “imprisonment” or withholding allowance as “robbing.” Indeed, he doesn’t seem to mention at all that his research indicates such punishments are more harmful than spanking. 270 264. See, e.g., Rosellini, supra note 27 (“When Larzelere and others presented their research at the 1996 AAP conference on spanking, it prompted a quiet wave of revisionism. The two conference organizers, S. Kenneth Schonberg and Stanford B. Friedman, both pediatrics professors at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, wrote afterward in Pediatrics, ‘We must confess that we had a preconceived notion that corporal punishment, including spanking, was innately and always “bad.”’”). 265. Id. (“[B]y the end of the conference, the two skeptics acknowledged that ‘given a relatively “healthy” family life in a supportive environment, spanking in and of itself is not detrimental to a child or predictive of later problems.’”). 266. Compare, e.g., Trumbull, supra note 180 and accompanying text; Trumbull, supra note 123; Edwards, supra note 20 and accompanying text, with STRAUS, supra note 33 (calling spanking “hitting” throughout the book), and supra note 102 and accompanying text. 267. Compare, e.g., FRANCIS GRAHAM WILSON, POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURAL RENEWAL: COLLECTED ESSAYS 14-15 (H. Lee Cheek, Jr., M. Susan Power & Kathy B. Cheek eds., 2001) (citing FRANCIS GRAHAM WILSON, A THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION 101, 103 (Greenwood 1975) (1962)) (“[P]ublic discourse [is] endangered by propaganda and submerged within an increasingly urban culture. The propagandist uses sophisticated techniques to create symbols, and does not appeal to reason; rather he uses emotion in order to manipulate mass minds in the contemporary world. In a modern secular democracy where intellectuals manipulate public opinion, discourse in the public square is vastly different from a communal, consensual discussion.”), with, e.g., Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 453 (1972) (saying children can fundamentally affect a person). 268. See generally STRAUS, supra note 33 (calling spanking “hitting” throughout the book). 269. See, e.g., supra note 238 and accompanying text. 270. See, e.g., id.
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