Newswise — DURHAM, N.H. – Murray Straus, co-director of the University of New Hampshire Family Research Lab, is available to discuss the long-term impact of corporal punishment.
Straus is widely considered the foremost researcher in the field of corporal punishment and one of the world’s leading researchers on family violence. He has studied spanking by large and representative samples of American parents since 1969. He is the author of the groundbreaking book “Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families and Its Effects on Children.”
“Parents should never spank. Not just because of the tiny risk that it will escalate into physical abuse, but even more because more than 100 studies have found that legal and socially approved spanking increases the chance that the child will have behavior problems later on,” Straus said.
“The research clearly shows the gains from spanking come at a big cost. These included weakening the tie between children and parents, and increasing the probability that the child will hit other children or their parents, and as adults, hit a dating or marital partner. Spanking also slows down mental development and lowers the probability of a child doing well in school,” he said. “There is more than 90 percent agreement on these facts in more than 100 studies on spanking’s side effects. One would be hard-pressed to find another aspect of parenting and child behavior where the results are so consistent.”
Select research on corporal punishment from Dr. Straus:
Children Who Are Spanked Have Lower IQs, New Research Findshttp://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2009/sept/lw25straus.cfm
Spanking Kids Increases Risk of Sexual Problems as Adults, New Research Showshttp://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/feb/lw28spanking.cfm
Prof. Straus has published much of his research on corporal punishment on his website http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/cp.htm.
The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.
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