Sure, kids who are spanked more display more aggressive behavior, and disobedience of all kinds. That is why they are spanked. Docile kids get punished less, and with less severe punishments, because they are more compliant. Most parents don't use physical punishment as a first resort; but good parents do know their children and will use whatever discipline is necessary to correct misbehaviour.

Justin Wrote

"the child keeps pushing the parents buttons and gets the parent sooo frustrated because the child doesnt want to listen, so the parent spanks the child as because it works for the moment."

Yes children will often push the parents buttons to see how much they can get away with. everyone does it in life regardless of age Yes we adults do it too)
But they don't frustrate the parents on purpose, depending on the age of the child, they don't understand that concept. Please do not lump all parents who spank into the "so the parent spanks the child as because it works for the moment."

A parent who spanks thier child ( and not HITS them) paddles them on the arse where there is plenty of flesh to absorb the hits and not hurt too much.

My brothers and sisters and I were all spanked as children and we do not have aggressive behavious at all. We are very patient parents and very patient people.
Our children get spanked when it's appropriate for the spanking, not because its the thing to do at the moment.

I know people who do not spank thier children and man oh man, the kids run that household. they don't get what they want and they will throw one helluva temper tantrum to get what they want UNTILL they get what they want. One of my friends 8 year old child even struck his mother ( a good friend of ours) with her own belt because she told him to get his own toy from the bedroom. The people I speak or of are great friends and will do anything for anyone even thier own kids. But they lack the will to disciplne thier children.

Something tells me if you a) think spanking is ethically a-ok, and b) believe "my auntie done it, so it must be good" constitutes valid logical reasoning, then your children are going to have greater problems than simply a sore ass.

I do not believe that spanking is "necessary", although I do believe at certain critical stages of a child's life, spanking can be a powerful tool. Spanking should never be ritualistic or frequent no matter how difficult children can be sometimes. I grew up in a spanking home, I am not a violent person at all and anyone who knows me would willingly agree. I do believe there are many alternatives to spanking that many parents don't have time, patience or creativity to follow through with. Let's face it, this is not the 40's, 50's or 60's, there is rarely seen a stay at home parent who cares for children, unless it's their profession, so there is definitely a lack of nurturing that there once was in the family. I don't blame the mom's as it is only half their responsibility to raise the children. Who I do blame is the people who say that a way a parent raises their child, without violence, is right or wrong. Society needs to learn to keep their nose out of everyone else business... That being said.. violence of any kind against children should be punished in turn. Children look to us, as elders/adults, for guidance and support. It is our responsibility as parents to provide that guidance and ALWAYS support our children. 'nuff said.

This artical is absolutely ludicris. Did they also take into account other factors in the house, like the amount of telivision or video games? What about extra couriccular activities? As a child I was spanked, NEVER for something small. I KNEW when I got a spanking that I deserved it, and I knew I should have gotten them more often than I did because I was bad. Corpral punishment? Give me a break, in 25 years the children of today who are misbehaving will run the world. Saying no nicely will only get you so far. I dont believe in hitting your kid everytime they do soemthing wrong. And for those of you who think that we "spankers" need to find other ways to punish children, and stop using the lazy way out: get real, I can count on one hand the times I got spanked, and I can definately say that it always did more to enstill in my mind wrong, than ANY other form of punishment.

Totally disagree with you and I do not beleive your results, you may have deplomas up your wasu. There is nothing wrong with spanking kids to teach them right from wrong, I'm 63 years old, never been in trouble, never received a handout, never failed a grade from primary school till I finished University, never did drugs, always looked and found a job on my own. AND WHY because if I didn't listen there were consecuences. Notice in our society today the troubled kids throughout our nation and why is that because they were never held accountable for their actions. You say that kids become more aggressive if they were spanked at an early age, MAYBE SO but you know what my mother did if I became aggressive she held my head under the cold water tap for a few minutes, that sure cooled me off in a hurry. Why don't you people come up with more productive studies such as finnding a solution for the homeless, for the seniors who are lonely just to mention a couple rather than this BULL SHIT......

The spanked kids grow-up to be aggressive as adults because they were little bastards to begin with, hence the spankings!

I along with my 5 brothers were spanked and disciplined by a stern hand until about 10 yrs of age. There is some distance between our ages, but regardless we all turned out just fine. The debate to spank or not to spank, that is the question. In my eyes I see no wrong doing for disciplining by spanking, but do disagree with beating your child. There is a difference. I never had an over aggressive approach during my childhood years after being raised this way. The truth is in our society as a whole. With both parents being forced to work in most cases to survive, raising children has become much more difficult then in the past. There is a lot of extra vices in todays society that influence children to be less obiedient and respectful to parents, teachers and each other. Like I said, we only need to look at what our society has cultivated over the years when it comes to spending quality family time. The world is too fast and furious leaving families in the dust. I say if you can keep control on your families morals and respect for mankind, than spank until your heart is content because they will be better for it. If you want to talk about aggressive behaviours, take a look at the T.V(media in war zones, more graphic movies, etc), aggressive video games and the internet. These have all become great baby sitters for the majority of parents allowing our kids to become comfortably numb.

One other comment on the article...

The picture is that of a baby. Was this to manipulate responses? Anybody who would spank a baby needs help.

Has anyone watched Russell Peter's take on "beating your kids"??? Hilarious. (For those of you who don't know who Russell Peters is, he's an indian comedian... Look him up).

I was spanked often and without any other reason then "because I love you" and the (truncated) verse in the bible "spare the rod, spoil the child" These spankings were not a few small taps on the bum, they were "taken out to the woodshed" beatings that left marks from my thighs to my lower back. They happened from the time I was little (still in a diaper) to the time I moved out at 17 years old. I am not a violent person nor do I spank my own children. My children are not violent and get many compliments from teachers, principals, friends, family and strangers about how well behaved my children are. My in-laws (who are step-grandparents to my children) where blown away when my youngest knew he did something wrong and put himself on a voluntary time out. So I do not agree that all children who are not spanked are misbehaved, I believe they way a child acts is solely based on the way they are being parented. For the child that is kicking their mother when they do not get their way, they have been shown that they can get away with this behavior without any sort of repercussion. The parent in that case has given the authority role they should hold over to the child, it really has nothing to do with spanking itself.
To spank or not to spank, I think comes down to first of all the parent and how the parent administers the spanking and secondly, the child and how they react. Obviously if a child reacts violently, spanking is not going to be the correct method of punishment; and I don't believe you can "spank through it" like my mom did with my sister. Then the parent has to ask themselves where is this violent outburst coming from, is it how the spankings are being administered? A spanking given when the parent is calm I do not believe will cause a violent nature, but an angry spanking or beating will teach a child it's ok to take their anger out on others. Next a parent should evaluate the child’s environment: does the child witness violence among their friends or role models, TV or video games? How is their diet, do they eat/drink a lot of sugary or processed (chemicals) foods or drinks? Do they have food sensitivities that will cause a difference in behaviors?

I'm no expert on statistics with regards to spanking leading to violence in later life. What I do know is that upon observing family and friends and how they've dealt with their children, I've found the children of the "spankers" tend to be better behaved than the "non-spanked" kids.

I'll use my girlfriend , a non-spanking advocate, as an example.
Both her kids (one is 6 the other 4) are unruly and actually violent kids, constantly throwing tantrums, and making rude demands upon their parents and other children.

The other day the elder child, a girl threatened to kick her mom if she didn't grab her a juice , her mom politely declined to get her juice and calmly asked her to "be nice" and this girl proceeded to kick her mother HARD in the ankles.

Another example my sister-in law who I know for a fact was raised in a non-spanking household ( she was raised by her mother a non spanker while my husband was raised separately by his father who is ironically a "spanker" )

My sister-in law is to say the least a very aggressive in your face personality who constantly seeks attention and is very demanding. If she is ever declined for whatever reason she throws tantrums and starts hurling insults and has on many occasion threatened " to kill" certain people.

I'm not arguing that spanking children necessarily wills them into perfectly behaved adults , but I certainly believe it may make them conscious of repercussions of misbehaving and helps sets a standard for acceptable behaviours.

Spanking or inflicting physical abuse on anyone at anytime is barbaric. I was spanked often as a child for "misbehaving". This repressive form of punishment is a no-brainer ... literally. It's for lazy people who aren't capable of finding creative solutions to solving (fix) their problems except to hit it with a hammer hoping it will improve.

I was spanked, along with my three sisters.... and we all turned out fine. I think people need to look into the other factors of the children's agressive behaviour.

Spanking should be defined in the article. Spanking does not lead to these behaviours noted in the article if used properly. Someone could say telling a child to "shut up" or other strong words could lead to the same behaviours.

"How can you teach your child that hitting and acting out is wrong, if you don’t lead by example?"

dumbest thing ive ever heard. Spanking does not necessarily mean hitting, its more like of a discipline and punishment. However though, i wouldn't blame the child if he grows up having an (as the article says) aggresive behaviour. It entirely depends on his/her parents way of discipline and how they do it.

But I personally believe that spanking a child is necessary because it teaches them that wrong behaviours have bad consequences and it helps them remember what is right and what is wrong (in the hard way).

There is a difference between spanking and hitting and there should be no reason that a parent is frequently spanking a child. To me this study sounds like it focused on aggressive parents who can't control themselves let alone their child.

If a child doesnt listen time and time again then what are you supposed to do? Let them run the household, wait till they communicate with you, maybe give em a happy meal? If a child keeps pushing you to see what it can get away with then send them into a corner I guess just like what Dr. Phil would do. I think what it boils down to is that the child keeps pushing the parents buttons and gets the parent sooo frustrated because the child doesnt want to listen, so the parent spanks the child as because it works for the moment.

Spanking kept me on the straight and narrow. It's a lot less pain and mental stress learning that there are consequences to my actions by my loving parents then from the judicial system that doesn't offer a lot of forgiveness or rehabilitation in the courts or jail system.

I would be interested also in the details of the study. My husband and I find spanking is a good disciplinary tool, but we have rules for its use. First of all, we only do 1 or 2 spanks on the bum. It has natural 'cushioning' and will hurt enough to get the point across without lasting very long. You also can't really do permanent damage. Secondly, we may not spank when we are angry. It must be a non-emotional reaction to the action. If we are angry, we give a time out to allow both of us time to cool off. Thirdly, we don't continue it if it isn't effective. If one or two spanks doesn't work, we don't continue with 5 or 10. We move on to find a disciplinary action that does have impact. On our first son, (5) spanking worked fine for discipline. Most times we didn't need to use it, but for repeated problems or things that he knew were wrong, it was used. In most cases, a time-out worked well enough. For our second son (3), spanking and time-outs don't work very well. He needs consequential discipline. Example: if he throws his car at his brother (which he knows is wrong) we clean up all his cars, and he isn't allowed to play with them for an hour or two. We put them up high so he can still see them and if he asks for them, we explain why he can't play with them. It is effective since he usually quite sorry by the time he gets his cars back, and he remembers for next time. This does take more time and consistency, but I believe raising your children isn't supposed to be 'convenient'. Most things that are worth anything take extra time and energy! I find that if parents don't spank or have some other sort of rule for consequences, they usually end up yelling and screaming at their kids. How much more damage does this cause in the long run? For an effective study, I'd be curious to see where these kids end up in 10 more years... which ones are the ones having trouble as teenagers or adults? Isn't that the purpose of discipline, to raise adults that understand and respect authority?

Spanking is a quick, effective punishment that doesn't get dragged on and on and allows the child and parent to move on. The child learns very quickly that there is uncomfortable consequences to bad behaviour and they remember it. They don't question their parents and say "how come your allowed to hit people and I'm not", that's just ridiculous. The punishments that would be mores likely to cause emotional damage would be the ones that are dragged out causing the child to become depressed and frustrated. Spanking doesn't have to be "frequent" either. If a child has to be spanked frequently, maybe the violent behaviour is already in them, regardless of how they are punished.

"Frequent" spanking is the key word which causes aggressive behaviour later in life. This is understandable. However, occasional spanking is not harmful and teaches that there are consequences to bad behaviour.

I'd like to read the details of this study, but the first thing that i wonder is, from a "genetic" standpoint, if the parents are predisposed to aggressive behaviour, and this is manifested in them "spanking", could the fact the children begin to show aggressive behaviour not also be a result of passed on genetic code for such a thing? How was this accounted for and isolated? That seems to me like it could be a major flaw in the conclusion.