Spanking your children could cause them to become violent with a partner later in life, according to a new study.
A team of researchers interviewed 758 19- and 20-year-olds in southeast Texas. They asked if they experienced violence in their adult relationships and what kind of corporal punishments, including spanking and getting struck with an object, they received as a child.
The study found 69 percent were physically punished during childhood and 19 percent said they committed a form of dating violence.
“Kids who said they had experienced corporal punishment were more likely to have recently committed dating violence,” Jeff Temple, the study’s lead author, told CNN.
The team took into account age, gender, parent’s education and any other history of abuse and found that people who’d been spanked as a kid had a 29 percent higher risk for committing dating violence. But they noted that the correlation between spanking and relationship were the same across the board, regardless of these factors.
Their findings were published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Researchers added that dating violence can obviously be caused by other factors, such as mental health or substance abuse, but that physical punishment in children should also be considered among the factors.
“While parents may think this form of physical punishment is a good lesson, substantial research indicates that it does way more harm than good,” Temple said in a statement. “While we can’t say that spanking causes later violence, it follows that if a kid learns that physical punishment is a way to solve conflict, he or she may carry that over into conflicts with later intimate partners.”
A team of researchers interviewed 758 19- and 20-year-olds in southeast Texas. They asked if they experienced violence in their adult relationships and what kind of corporal punishments, including spanking and getting struck with an object, they received as a child.
The study found 69 percent were physically punished during childhood and 19 percent said they committed a form of dating violence.
“Kids who said they had experienced corporal punishment were more likely to have recently committed dating violence,” Jeff Temple, the study’s lead author, told CNN.
The team took into account age, gender, parent’s education and any other history of abuse and found that people who’d been spanked as a kid had a 29 percent higher risk for committing dating violence. But they noted that the correlation between spanking and relationship were the same across the board, regardless of these factors.
Their findings were published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Researchers added that dating violence can obviously be caused by other factors, such as mental health or substance abuse, but that physical punishment in children should also be considered among the factors.
“While parents may think this form of physical punishment is a good lesson, substantial research indicates that it does way more harm than good,” Temple said in a statement. “While we can’t say that spanking causes later violence, it follows that if a kid learns that physical punishment is a way to solve conflict, he or she may carry that over into conflicts with later intimate partners.”
