Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know why people make this claim. I don’t spank my kids, but the idea that spanking doesn’t work seems utterly absurd to me. It’s the classic “positive punishment”. Is it the best way to get a kid to behave? No, not according to the research. Is it going to turn generally shitty parenting into good parenting? Obviously not. Can it be an effective discipline strategy? Yes.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx
> As in many areas of science, some researchers disagree about the validity of the studies on physical punishment. Robert Larzelere, PhD, an Oklahoma State University professor who studies parental discipline, was a member of the APA task force who issued his own minority report because he disagreed with the scientific basis of the task force recommendations. While he agrees that parents should reduce their use of physical punishment, he says most of the cited studies are correlational and don’t show a causal link between physical punishment and long-term negative effects for children.
> “The studies do not discriminate well between non-abusive and overly severe types of corporal punishment,” Larzelere says. “You get worse outcomes from corporal punishment than from alternative disciplinary techniques only when it is used more severely or as the primary discipline tactic.”
> In a meta-analysis of 26 studies, Larzelere and a colleague found that an approach they described as “conditional spanking” led to greater reductions in child defiance or anti-social behavior than 10 of 13 alternative discipline techniques, including reasoning, removal of privileges and time out (Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 2005). Larzelere defines conditional spanking as a disciplinary technique for 2- to 6-year-old children in which parents use two open-handed swats on the buttocks only after the child has defied milder discipline such as time out.
The studies that exist largely seem unable or unwilling to distinguish between mild spanking and physical abuse. Those in the spanking-is-evil camp are fine with this and will assert that there is no difference because they’ve already decided and are happy to argue circularly. So they’ll argue that because some physical punishment has clear negative outcomes, all physical punishment must have negative outcomes despite support for that belief being minimal to nonexistent. This is akin to asserting that brief Time Out as punishment is harmful because locking a child in a closet for hours as punishment is harmful.
I feel like there should be more compelling proof that spanking (not a rollup category of “physical punishment”) is harmful. There seems to be little to no evidence for this, which makes the belief pretty suspect.