Physical punishment is one of the most heavily studied parenting practices in the world. The findings have been pointing the same direction for decades: it works in the moment, and it backfires over time. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the WHO all recommend against it. Worth understanding why before deciding what to do at the kitchen table on a hard Tuesday. For more evidence-based parenting information, visit Healthbooq.
What the Research Shows
Large meta-analyses — the kind that pool hundreds of studies across cultures and decades — converge on the same picture. Children who are physically punished, even at "mild" levels like open-hand spanking on the bottom, show on average:
- More aggression toward peers and siblings, particularly under age 5
- More behavioural problems at school
- Higher rates of anxiety and depression
- Worse parent-child relationships and less expressed affection toward the punishing parent
- Lower academic engagement
- Higher rates of antisocial and delinquent behaviour in adolescence
The 2016 Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor meta-analysis, covering 75 studies and around 161,000 children, found these effects held even when the punishment was confined to spanking — i.e. not the kind anyone would call abuse. There is no spanking-positive corner of the literature. The disagreements among researchers are about effect size, not direction.
Why It Looks Like It Works
Because in the short term, it does. A spanked child usually stops what they're doing immediately. That's where the "spanking works" intuition comes from — and it's a real observation. Behaviour stops, parent feels relief, the brain logs a win.
What it doesn't do is teach. The child learns to avoid the behaviour when the punisher is watching, not why the behaviour matters. The moment the threat lifts, the behaviour comes back. Worse, the child learns one thing reliably: when you're frustrated with someone smaller than you, force is an option. Which is precisely the lesson nobody intends to teach.
A useful analogy is taking a painkiller for an infection. The pain stops; the infection isn't being treated. By the time the system pushes back, you've lost ground.
"I Was Spanked and I'm Fine"
Common, and worth taking seriously rather than dismissing.
A few things are usually going on at once. Survivorship bias — people who turned out fine attribute their outcomes to how they were raised, including the parts that didn't help. Memory — most people remember childhood discipline patchily, and the worst moments often blur. Aggregate vs individual — plenty of people who were spanked are doing well; aggregate data still shows higher rates of the harms above. Both can be true. Cultural normalisation — when something was universal in your generation, the harms are harder to see because everyone has them.
The research question isn't "can someone who was spanked grow up okay?" Obviously yes. It's "do children fare better, on average, when their parents use other methods?" The answer to that has been yes for some time.
Why Parents Reach For It
Almost no one spanks because they're cruel. They spank because:
- It's what they were raised with, and the alternatives weren't modelled
- In a heated moment, it's the first thing the body produces
- Religious or cultural context seems to endorse it
- They believe it's necessary for safety — running into the road, hot stove
- They're exhausted, and it stops the behaviour fastest
Naming this honestly matters. Treating spanking as a moral failing rather than a learned reflex makes it harder to change, not easier.
What the Major Bodies Say
The AAP's 2018 policy statement on effective discipline explicitly recommends against spanking, slapping, and any form of corporal punishment, citing the research above. The American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and the World Health Organization take the same position. As of 2024, more than 65 countries have banned physical punishment of children outright, including all of Scandinavia, Germany, France, and most of Latin America.
This is one of the rarer cases in child development where the major bodies agree without much hedging.
What Works Better
Discipline approaches that teach, rather than punish, produce better behaviour change over weeks and months and a stronger relationship over years:
- Clear, predictable limits, explained at the child's developmental level
- Natural consequences ("if you throw the toy, the toy goes away")
- Logical consequences tied to the behaviour rather than to pain
- Breaks for calming down — with an adult nearby, not punitive isolation
- Repair and naming afterward: "you were angry, and we don't hit. Let's try again."
These take more effort upfront. They don't produce the dopamine hit of immediate compliance. But the behaviour they shape tends to stick, and the relationship survives intact.
If You Were Spanked
Recognising that it shaped you isn't the same as accusing your parents. Common patterns in adults raised this way:
- A short fuse with their own children, especially when tired
- Anxiety around authority and conflict
- A reflex toward physical punishment under stress, even when intellectually opposed
- A buried belief that pain is required for learning
- Difficulty with emotional vulnerability
Therapy can help, particularly if you find yourself sliding toward the same patterns with your own children despite intending otherwise. This is one of the more responsive things therapy treats.
If You've Been Using Physical Punishment and Want to Stop
You can change this. People do, often.
- Identify the triggers. When does the urge spike? Tiredness? A specific behaviour? Echoes of your own childhood?
- Pre-decide the alternative. In the calm moment, decide what you'll do instead — leave the room, count out loud, hand off to your partner, name the feeling.
- Manage your own state first. A regulated nervous system makes the alternative possible. An escalated one defaults to old patterns.
- Expect imperfect change. The first time you respond differently is the start, not the end. Each repetition rewires the reflex.
- Repair when you slip. "I hit you. That wasn't okay. I'm working on this." Children handle parental honesty far better than the silent restoration of business-as-usual.
- Get help if you need it. A therapist, a parenting class focused on discipline, or a coach for this specifically — none of these are admissions of failure.
The reflex took a long time to install. It takes time to uninstall. It is one of the most worthwhile changes a parent can make.
Key Takeaways
Spanking stops behaviour in the moment and makes it worse over time. Decades of research link it to more aggression, more anxiety, weaker parent-child relationships, and worse outcomes than alternatives — which is why the AAP, APA, AMA, and WHO all recommend against it.
