Should Parents Be Allowed To Spank Children

In a test of 100 families Dr. Diana Baumrind found that children who were moderately spanked by their parents as a form of punishment had no long lasting psychological effects. 94 percent of children between ages three and four have been spanked at least once by their parents in the last year (). Doctors highly encourage the use of nonabusive spanking or no spanking at all. However, doctors have found a reduced level of misbehavior in children who have been non abusively spanked (). In society spanking is often seen as abuse, and has gotten many parents in trouble with police due to complaints from neighbors or people in public who see a parent punishing their child. Parents should be allowed to punish their children how they see fit, and if spanking is done properly and the specific steps are taken then it is not abuse. Many people will say that spanking hinders a child’s ability to have compassion for …show more content…
Contrary to popular belief children are not more aggressive when they have been properly spanked. They actually have decreased misbehavior and are more likely to obey authority. An article from the New York Times discussed the effects of spanking on children and gave evidence from two different doctors. In the article this statement was made “Dr. Robert Larzelere of the University of Nebraska Medical Center reviewed 38 studies and found that in children under 7, nonabusive spanking produced no harmful effects and reduced misbehavior when used as a backup for milder discipline techniques like reasoning or timeouts.” Dr. Larzelere’s study shows the spanking is effective and still has no harmful effects on a child. There actually was a reduced rate of misbehavior making spanking more effective than giving a child a