Spanking makes kids more aggressive, should be illegal: report
http://www.canada.com/Spanking+makes+kids+more+aggressive+should+illegal+report/6110648/story.html
BY HEATHER YUNDT, FOR POSTMEDIA NEWS FEBRUARY 6, 2012
OTTAWA - Spanking makes children more aggressive and should be made illegal, a newly released report suggests.
The Canadian Medical Association Journal released a report Monday detailing two decades of research pointing to that conclusion. Joan Durrant of the University of Manitoba and Ron Ensom of the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, authors of the report, say the federal government should remove section 43 from the criminal code which allows physical punishment in certain circumstances. This section was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2004.
``No study has ever found physical punishment to have a long-term positive effect,'' Durrant and Ensom said.
The two point to research, including a study designed to reduce difficult behaviour in children, in which researchers found that families that reduced their use of physical punishment saw a decline in aggression and anti-social behaviour in their children.
Images of children's brains gathered in another study suggested that physical punishment may change areas in the brain connected to performance on IQ tests and could increase a child's vulnerability to drug and alcohol dependence.
A 2000 Canadian study found that children who were spanked were seven times more likely to be assaulted by their parents.
``The evidence is clear and compelling - physical punishment of children and youth plays no useful role in their upbringing,'' Durrant and Ensom said in The Joint Statement on Physical Punishment of Children and Youth, which was endorsed by more than 400 organizations.
Andrea Mrozek, manager of research at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, is concerned by Durrant and Ensom's conclusions.
``I'm concerned that the studies they examined correlate abuse and spanking and say that those are the same things,'' she said. ``Those are not the same things. They are distinct. Because you have loving parents across this country who discipline their children with one on the bottom in the appropriate age range . . . They are not abusing their kids.''
Mrozek says banning spanking could criminalize regular parents.
``I'm not an advocate for spanking, I'm an advocate for parents who know their children well and can decide,'' she said. ``Within one family you may have one child for whom spanking is an appropriate use of discipline and one child for whom it is not.''
Durrant and Ensom's report points to 31 countries that have already banned physical punishment for children, including Germany, Sweden and New Zealand. New Zealand established a ban on physical punishment in 2007. The country held a referendum in 2009 which resulted in a majority of voters calling for the ban to be overturned. The New Zealand government upheld the ban.
Durrant and Ensom say legislation is not all that is needed. They say that education and support for parents could reduce the use of physical punishment.