(HealthDay) -- An occasional swat on the rear won't do any long-term psychological damage to your child, reports this news service story on CNN.
"A lot of people out there advocate that any spanking at all is detrimental, and that's not what we found," says one of the study's authors, Elizabeth Owens from the University of California at Berkeley. Owens and her colleagues studied data from 100 white, middle-class families over a period of 22 years. The children and parents were observed and tested when the kids were 4, 9 and 14 years old.
Most of the families used some form of physical punishment for preschoolers, and the researchers found no behavioral or cognitive problems in the group that had been spanked. When parents crossed the line from mild or moderate spanking to more severe forms of punishment, however, children did suffer both socially and behaviorally. Only 4 percent to 7 percent of the parents resorted to more severe forms of punishment, such as using a paddle, hitting the children in the face or throwing or shaking them.
While Owens says she and her researchers aren't advocating the use of spanking, they believe efforts to ban spanking aren't necessary because it doesn't cause harm.
Others aren't so sure.
"I have a hard time imagining it would be a constructive part of the relationship," says Peter Mangione, co-director of the Center for Child and Family Studies in San Francisco. "The child is learning from you that it's appropriate to use physical power to solve problems."
For parents who want to spare the rod, here are nine alternatives to spanking from Positive Parenting.
