A recent study found that spanking a child negatively affects IQ. How should these parents be targeted to stop this practice?

I was spanked as a child, my IQ is not anywhere near low. I think the study ignores the X factor. Yes, if you punish a child by spanking alone all the time and do so without ever explaining the action, that may hurt their development.

However that's not how spanking should be used as a tool for parents, when used correctly in my opinion spanking has no detrimental effects. This particular "researcher" has been loosely tying negative associations to spanking for quite some time. In every case nothing is actually proved, it goes on the news and makes more parents afraid to discipline their children.

It's ridiculous, and that the media keeps playing into this person who is trying to back up his/her own personal feelings about how to raise a child with "studies" is even more so. If you can't prove something, admit it's your opinion and move on. Rather than trying to pull the rags over parents eyes with sub-par biased research.

Some links of interest: Quote---------- The first review of child outcomes of nonabusive or customary physical punishment was published by Larzelere in Pediatrics in Oct. 1996). Dr. Diana Baumrind (Cal-Berkeley) summarized the implications in the first sentence of her published response: "a blanket injunction against spanking is not scientifically supportable" (p. 828).

The review found 8 studies that, like Straus et al. (1997), distinguished parental effects on children from the opposite causal direction. All 8 studies found beneficial outcomes in children, generally of nonabusive spanking of 2- to 6-year olds, when used as a back-up for time out or reasoning.

End Quote----------------- faculty.biola.edu/paulp/CritiqueStraus.html Addresses one of Straus's earlier studies of a similar nature. 8 studies compared to 1, yet somehow the one is the one we see on the news? http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/research-a-scientific-review-of-disciplinary-spanking Compares both sides fairly, with the facts, not media scare tactics.

I personally support spanking in extreme situations, in moderation, when coupled with an explanation to the child. We need to keep in mind abuse and spanking are not the same thing.

Huh. Off the top of my head, I know 4 people who have Ph.D. S who were spanking growing up.

They might have been geniuses otherwise! In all seriousness, be careful to assume that the state knows better than the parents and loves the children more. I know there are exceptions, but parents are much more likely to know what is best for their children and to love them than the government or social workers.

Assume that first, not that parents are evil first.

Well that sure could explain my low IQ as I will remind my mom. Education is the only way to stop this in parents. Most will not do something they know will harm their kids in the long run.

Maybe public service adds on television.

Motivating loving and respecting them more practise when comes to get a higher iq cheers.

A simple spanking is behavior modification and should not be stopped. Parents who do this are doing effective parenting, why target them to stop? I do not think a simple spanking which is an open hand across the dressed butt in my eyes, hurts a child or causes damage.

To spank a child with anything other than a hand, or to spank them several times with a hand is a beating and should not be done. There is a world of difference between spanking and beating a child. I think beating a child about the head or tossing a child around would likely cause way more damage (mental and physical) than a simple swat across the butt could ever do.

I have spanked the butts of my children when they were little, and none of them have lower IQs than their peers.

The researcher is unscientific and dishonest. Examine this quote from your article: "Contrary to what everyone believes, being hit by parents is a traumatic experience," Blanket statements about "everyone" are very unscientific. Statements about what "everyone believes" are not only unscientific, but blatantly dishonest.

Every one of us knows LOTS of people who believe being hit by parents is a traumatic experience, thus, the non-spanking efforts. Look at the body of work by Strauss. His claim to fame and way of making a living depends upon convincing as many people as possible that all spanking is unequivocally wrong, and that they need him to supply the answers.

He obviously has a horse in this race. I have plenty of college professors in my family. All of them were spanked.

I'll match their intelligence with non-spanked professors any day of the week. My whole family has Master's degrees in one subject or another, and we were all spanked. Personally, I received many spankings, and feel quite comfortable matching IQ scores with anti-spanking proponents at the time and place of their choosing.

There's a new study that shows children who have older fathers have lower IQs, as well as higher than normal rates of autism and schizophrenia. Should we now establish a maximum age for fathering children? Is it the outcome of the spanking that Straus' study is against?

Or is it the alleged cause of the outcome. If it is the outcome of lower IQ that we are so worried about, shouldn't we be quoting results of studies that show childhood IQ test scores do not co-relate with adult IQ test scores, and shouldn't other factors, like older fathers, be just as troublesome? Where is the anti older-father lobby?

Anti-spanking proponents seem to only become concerned about the IQ scores of children so long as they can use those scores to vilify spankers. It's strange that they seem to feel the need to force their own parenting choices and decisions on everyone. It's just as strange that they seem unable to differentiate between spanking and abuse.

One would think that their higher IQ would allow them a finer sense of discrimination between levels of severity in corporeal punishment. Perhaps they are TOO smart for that and leave it to those of us poor slobs who have been so severely damaged by parental spanking.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.