The Science and Statistics Behind Spanking Suggests that

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11-FULLER_FINAL_AFTERPROOF.DOC 2/17/2009 8:50 AM 250 AKRON LAW REVIEW [42:243 oppose corporal punishment until the late 1980s—the twilight of his life. 23 For most of his career, he believed physical discipline could be helpful, depending on the parent’s temperament. 24 What Dr. Spock did urge since the 1940s was a parenting philosophy that balanced firm and consistent discipline with love. 25 This was a wise response to the prevailing childrearing advice from the 1920s that mothers were not to express love toward their children. 26 By the 1950s, young parents increasingly relied on childrearing professionals like Dr. Spock to understand how to raise children. 27 Dr. Spock opposed such reliance, saying: In the 20th century parents have been persuaded that the only people who know for sure how children should be managed are the child psychiatrists, psychologists, teachers, social workers and pediatricians—like myself. This is a cruel deprivation that we the influential pediatrician, began warning that corporal punishment can traumatize children and trigger more aggressive behavior.”). 23. Compare BENJAMIN SPOCK, M.D., DR. SPOCK ON PARENTING 151-52 (1988) (saying that in earlier decades and earlier editions of Baby and Child Care, he never opposed spanking, but now he had changed his position), with Eric Pace, Benjamin Spock, World’s Pediatrician, Dies at 94, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 17, 1998, at Obituary. 24. See, e.g., Benjamin Spock, M.D., What I Said in February About Raising Children—And What I Did Not Say, REDBOOK, June 1974, at 31 (“[W]hen I gave talks about child rearing, at least one of the reporters attending a press conference would ask immediately whether I believed in spanking children—as if this were by far the most crucial issue in child care. I would have to disappoint him by discussing all the other more important factors that go into good behavior, such as the child’s love of parents, wanting to be like the parents, the clarity and consistency of the parents’ leadership. Even when the question about spanking was repeated, I’d have to say that it depended on whether the spanking parent was generally kind and devoted or merely expressing ill temper that had little to do with the child’s behavior.”). 25. See, e.g., id.; Benjamin Spock, M.D., How Not to Bring Up a Bratty Child, REDBOOK, Feb. 1974, at 29 [hereinafter Spock, Bratty Child] (“Inability to be firm is . . . the commonest problem of parents in America today.”). 26. Compare id. at 29 (“I’ve never considered myself even remotely a permissivist. . . . There might have been a slight excuse for such an interpretation when the first edition was published, in 1946. Pediatrics advice was generally quite rigid then . . . I was one of the first pediatricians to advocate a reasonable respect for individual differences in babies’ readiness.”), with, e.g., J.B. WATSON, PSYCHOLOGICAL CARE OF INFANT AND CHILD (1928) (advocating strictness and even warning mothers about the “dangers” of expressing love toward their children). 27. See, e.g., Lynn Rosellini & Anna Mulrine, When to Spank: For Decades, Parenting Experts Have Said Spanking Irreparably Harms Kids. But a Close Look at the Research Suggests Otherwise, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REP., Apr. 13, 1998, available at http://www.goodparent.org/articles/whentospank.htm (“But by the early 1950s, young couples increasingly began to look to child-rearing ‘experts’—authors like Benjamin Spock, whose manual Baby and Child Care counseled against the punitive child-raising practices of earlier generations. Spock, a believer in firm and consistent parenting, did not rule out spanking in his book’s early editions.”).
11-FULLER_FINAL_AFTERPROOF.DOC 2/17/2009 8:50 AM 2009] THE SCIENCE AND STATISTICS BEHIND SPANKING 251 professionals have imposed on mothers and fathers. . . . We didn’t realize, until it was too late, how our know-it-all attitude was undermining the self-assurance of parents. . . . And because this is a forward-looking, innovative country, there has always been less respect for the wisdom of the older generation. 28 Nevertheless, childrearing professionals in the 1970s and 80s began using their influence to press an intensely child-centered view of the family—swinging the pendulum from the detached view of the 1920s to virtually the opposite extreme. 29 One of the more popular child-centered books, Thomas Gordon’s Parent Effectiveness Training, said parents should treat children like “a friend or a spouse.” 30 Such authors thought spanking may promote aggression, and a few now are trying to stop all punishments, even mental punishments like timeout. 31 Today, the most influential spanking opponent is probably Dr. Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire. 32 Dr. Straus thinks physical discipline can doom children to “major, and often life-long, social psychological problems,” like crime and mental illness. 33 While 28. Spock, Bratty Child, supra note 25, at 31. 29. See, e.g., id.; Rosellini, supra note 27 (revealing that psychologists and childdevelopment authorities during the 1970s and 80s advocated “a new, child-centered view of family. The locus of power should shift, these experts seemed to suggest, so that kids are equal members of the household.”); see, e.g., WATSON, supra note 26 and accompanying text. 30. See, e.g., Rosellini, supra note 27 (saying Thomas Gordon’s 1970 best-seller, Parent Effectiveness Training, advised parents to stop punishing kids and to start treating them “much as we treat a friend or a spouse”). 31. See, e.g., id. (reporting that many writers during the 1970s and 80s warned that strict parenting, and particularly punishments like spanking, could promote aggression and discourage children from cooperating with others) (“More recently, writers like Nancy Samalin and Barbara Coloroso counseled an end to punishment altogether.”). 32. See, e.g., id. (reporting that Dr. Straus’ Beating the Devil Out of Them “seemed to solidify the antispanking consensus”); MARY ANN LAMANNA & AGNES RIEDMANN, MARRIAGES & FAMILIES: MAKING CHOICES IN A DIVERSE SOCIETY 314 (2005) (“A leading domestic violence researcher, sociologist Murray Straus (1996, 1999a), advises parents never to hit children of any age under any circumstances.”). Dr. Straus is “Professor of Sociology and founder and Co-Director of the Family Research Laboratory, University of New Hampshire (since 1968).” Dr. Straus’ Biographical Summary, available at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/bio-sum.pdf. He “[p]reviously taught at the Universities of Minnesota, Cornell, Wisconsin, Washington State, York (England) Bombay (India), and the University of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).” Id. He is a recipient of the Ernest W. Burgess Award of the National Council of Family Relations (1977), the Distinguished Contribution Award, New Hampshire Psychological Society (1992), and the Research Career Achievement Award, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (1994). Id. 33. See, e.g., Straus, Corporal Punishment, supra note 20, at 9 (saying his longitudinal research shows that spanking “is associated with an increased risk of the child experiencing major, and often life-long, social and psychological problems. . . . such as delinquency and adult crime, low educational attainment, physical assaults on spouses, and mental illness.”); id. at 53 (suggesting
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