PARENTING: American moms are spanking their kids less: study

Hey, spanking: Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

 

American mothers’ use of corporal punishment decreased significantly from 1988 to 2011, an analysis of kindergarten-age kids in four representative national databases showed — an ebb that held true across socioeconomic levels.

The percentage of moms at the median income level endorsing “physical discipline” dropped from 46% to 21% in the study, which was published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Meanwhile, the proportion of moms at the 10th-income percentile favoring non-physical punishment like time-outs increased more than the middle- or upper-income groups, rising from 51% to 71%.

 

“By 2011, a minority of parents at all income and education levels endorsed physically disciplining a child in response to misbehavior and an even smaller minority reported using this strategy in the past week,” wrote study authors Rebecca M. Ryan, Ariel Kalil, Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest and Christina Padilla.

“By contrast, the vast majority of parents by that time, at all income and education levels, endorsed nonphysical discipline or talking with children.”

The study had a number of limitations, including the self-reported nature of parents’ responses and the possibly ambiguous response option of “talk to child.”

It remained unclear whether a 1998 American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement (“Guidance for Effective Discipline”) urging parents to eschew corporal punishment in favor of more peaceful strategies could take credit for the trend toward non-physical disciplining.

And despite the positive signs, the study authors warned that almost a third of moms at the lowest income level still endorsed physical discipline — a rate they called “alarmingly high.”

“I recommend that the AAP reaffirm and reissue the policy statement on discipline,” Heidi M. Feldman, a committee member who helped prepare the 1998 statement, wrote in a new commentary. “Though trends are favorable, many parents still report use of physical discipline. More change is necessary.”