GrahamY,

Yep you are biased by your background and no your sister wouldn't be smarter. Because the researcher is Strauss I'm particularly confident that something will show up to explain the results. He gets so carried away with his anti-smacking zeal that he doesn't go to a lot of trouble to make studies look convincing. Do you want me to find the study and make directly responsive comments? My guess as to the confounding variable he relied upon for this one (without yet having looked at the actual study) is that more intelligent parents smack less (smacking and socioeconomic status have been correlated not actual intellect) and (I believe although it is controversial) that IQ of parents correlates with IQ of child. Less sophisticated/intelligent parents, lacking other resources, would need to rely upon smacking more heavily as a trend. Further, there is some evidence of a general trend for children with lower IQs in families having more behavioural problems. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119237089/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 Obviously more problem = more need for intervention. Knowing Strauss he would have done a conclusion that took for granted that the link was causal and press released his study. The bottom line is don't assume everything you read is gospel.

Your sister is just an outlier. Clever kids vary in how naughty they are too. Looking at her as an individual the overall pattern wouldn't be so visible.

Mikk,

You don't own your children but you are responsible for molding them into ethical and responsible people who can live in society. That is a part of caring for them. As others have pointed out noone is talking about bashing. I'm sorry to hear about your own experiences.

Foxy,

Great post. My kids are quite young and I haven't yet had the experience of hitting them inappropriately but it sounds very human and I'm sure most parents share the experience. What I found interesting was that you apologise to them at those times. It is great to demonstrate such honesty to your kids.

MJPB, I was being a little tongue in cheek. But I am interested in anything you can dig-up on the study. The United Nations forbids smacking via a convention, so one assumes that there is some other evidence suggesting it harms children apart from this study. But then, given some of the UN's positions, maybe not.

I wasn't taking Strauss too seriously, just something to throw into the conversation and see where it led.

However, at the level of personal anecdote, my sister does self-report problems from the discipline and only in recent years has she more or less reconciled with my mother. Hope mum or sis aren't reading this. It may perversely have contributed to her fierce intelligence by making her more rebellious, or perhaps it was that tendency got her into trouble in the first place.

I liken physical punishment to the pistols that police carry. They don't get used very often, but people know that when police want to give us a fine for something, there is no way of getting out of it. The more that we carry on, the worse it will get for us.

Similarly, every child will at some stage ask 'what will happen if I break this rule?' Some chidren find that they can take their parents on and win. These children's parents need smacking to create a limit, even if other parents can cope without it.

I just can not get over the fact some link a smack on the bottom with a bashing.
Look is anyone here saying its ok to bash children?
No we are not, remember that so very famous American who told our parents and grand parents how to bring us up?
Time has proven much of those ideas wrong.
Todays kids, the ones with good parents, are getting much more love and care.
The children we see screaming out in public may be the victims of bad parenting.
But some times good parents in my view must smack the bottom.
It is in my view a sign of love to care enough to do so.

Thanks Graham. It is always a lively topic of conversation.

I agree with oneundergod when he summed up my argument perfectly <"...if govt says ok hitting,
one in one hundred may thus take it too far"

We don't know how much force was used on the child in question with the wooden spoon. You could certainly do a fair bit of damage with a wooden spoon if you were angry enough. Some parents do take it too far and tip it over into child physical abuse situations.

I don't believe there should be specific laws on smacking. There should be ad campaigns explaining better ways to discipline your children, so that people will think before really doing any damage to their kids.

However, I think if we were all honest we would agree that a little tap on the backside by a flat hand for a serious breach of the rules for a child, will not leave any real lasting damage.