Spanking, corporal punishment and negative long-term outcomes: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies

Harsher forms of physical punishment were more strongly associated with negative child outcomes than ordinary spanking.

“Taken together, these meta-analyses provide evidence that physical punishment is associated with negative child outcomes, particularly when the outcomes are divided into finer-grained categories (Ferguson, 2013; Gershoff, 2002) rather than when they are grouped into broad categories (Paolucci & Violato, 2004), and that harsher methods of physical punishment are more strongly associated with”

The four earlier meta-analyses of physical punishment used different article sets and reached inconsistent conclusions: Gershoff (2002) found it largely ineffective and harmful, Larzelere and Kuhn (2005) found it effective under some circumstances, and Ferguson (2013) and Paolucci and Violato (2004) found only modest links to cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems.

“Each of these four meta-analyses included a different set of articles and came to varied conclusions, namely that physical punishment is largely ineffective and harmful (Gershoff, 2002), that physical punishment is effective under certain circumstances (Larzelere & Kuhn, 2005), and that physical punishment is linked with children’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems but only modestly (F”

Two main criticisms of past meta-analyses were that spanking had been confounded with potentially abusive parenting in some studies and that spanking had been linked to detrimental outcomes only in methodologically weak studies.

“Two primary concerns that have been raised about past meta-analyses are that spanking has been confounded with potentially abusive parenting behaviors in some studies and that spanking has only been linked with detrimental outcomes in methodologically weak studies (Baumrind, Larzelere, & Cowan, 2002; Ferguson, 2013; Larzelere & Kuhn, 2005).”

Across the earlier meta-analyses, physical punishment was associated with negative child outcomes, especially when outcomes were analyzed in finer-grained categories rather than broad ones.

“Taken together, these meta-analyses provide evidence that physical punishment is associated with negative child outcomes, particularly when the outcomes are divided into finer-grained categories (Ferguson, 2013; Gershoff, 2002) rather than when they are grouped into broad categories (Paolucci & Violato, 2004), and that harsher methods of physical punishment are more strongly associated with”

A major concern is that reliance on cross-sectional designs may mask child-elicitation effects, where difficult children elicit more spanking rather than spanking causing problematic behavior.

“A major concern raised about the spanking literature in general and previous meta-analyses in particular is that their reliance on cross-sectional designs may mask what are truly child-elicitation effects (Baumrind et al., 2002; Ferguson, 2013; Larzelere et al., 2004). In other words, associations between spanking and problematic behavior may reflect the fact that difficult children elicit more sp”