Page 406 - Sociology and You

376 Unit 4 Social Institutions
Survey Research: Spanking and Antisocial Behavior
Like many children in the United States, you probably experienced spanking and other legal forms of physical corporal punishment from your parents. In the mid-1980s, research revealed that over 90 percent of parents used corporal punishment on young children, and more than half continued its use during the early teen years. Although high, this rate of corporal punishment was less than in the 1950s (99 percent) and the mid-1970s (97 percent). The rate has declined further since 1985, but nearly all American children still experience some form of corporal punishment.
The use of corporal punishment to correct or control the behavior of children is widely accepted in American culture. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is a warning deep in our national consciousness. However, Straus and his colleagues (1997) present evidence contradicting the no- tion that corporal punishment improves children’s behavior.
These researchers used data from interviews with a sample of over eight-hundred mothers of children aged six to nine years in a national study. (This was a longitudinal study, one that follows respondents over a period of time.) This study compared parents’ use of corporal punishment with antisocial behavior in children. The study defined cor- poral punishment as “the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain, but not injury, for the purpose of correction or control of the child’s behavior” (Straus, Sugarman, and Giles-Sims, 1997:761). Slapping a child’s hand or buttocks and squeez- ing a child’s arm are examples. A measure of antisocial behavior was based on the mothers’ reports of their children’s behavior: “cheats or tells lies,” “bullies or is cruel or mean to others,” “does not feel sorry after misbehaving,” “breaks things deliberately,” “is disobedient at school,” and “has trouble getting along with teachers.”
Since this was a longitudinal study, information on the frequency of parents’ use of corporal punishment was collected before reports on subsequent antisocial behavior. Contrary to common expectations, Straus found that the higher the use of corporal punishment, the higher the level of antisocial behavior two years later.
At the end of their report, the authors move from being strictly so- cial scientists to making a practical child-rearing recommendation. Straus