Culture, Spanking, and Aggresiveness

A recent article on spanking suggests that spanking toddlers increases aggressive behaviors. You can read the review of the orginal article at:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100412/hl_time/08599198101900

In the African-American community, spanking is nearly a universal phenomena. I was spanked (frequently!) and I used spanking for my own children (infrequently!). Of the patients in my pediatric practices over the 17 years, nearly all of my African American families used spanking in some form or fashion.

Over the past 10-15 years there have been numerous campaigns by child advocacy groups to discourage the use of spanking and the American Academy of Pediatrics now officially advocates against any form of corporal punishment.

So, is the common practice of spanking within African American families a demonstration of pathology? Does our aggressive behavior, particularly in the males who are incredibly over-represented in our penal system influenced by the well intentioned, but according to the mostly white researchers, destructive practice of spanking?

I would suggest that the study demonstrates that those who were spanked were indeed more aggressive, but it does not investigate whether the spanking was due to the fact that those children may have been more aggressive in the first place. In other words, spanking may be used more frequently in children who were inherently more aggressive. Just as African American families are not monolithic in their actions and attitudes, African American children are incredibly diverse in their aggresiveness and sensitivity. Within families who do spank, the frquency is not even distributed but is often a response to the activities of those children.

I was spanked more than my wife was. Our temperments are completely different and our sensitivity to other types of discipline were also different. A time out for me was often not effective. I am and always was a daydreamer. Giving me a timeout was an excuse to return to dreaming and my mother realized that it did not alter my behavior. It does not invalidate the usefulness of timeouts, but points out that different behavioral approaches have differing levels of effectiveness in different children.

What is your take on spanking? Are we, as researchers suggest, creating aggressive children? Is there a level of cultural ignorance, or conversely cultural pride when talking about this?

Leave you comments below,

Pastor M Traylor