This study examines the prevalence of maternal and paternal spanking of children at 3 and 5 years of age and the associations between spanking and children's externalizing behavior and receptive vocabulary through age 9. It uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, a longitudinal birth cohort study of children in 20 medium to large US cities. The authors highlight that despite the warnings of the American Academy of Pediatrics about the potentially deleterious effects of spanking and recommendations for families to use other methods of discipline, corporal punishment remains a widely endorsed parenting tool in US families. The use of spanking is highest for preschoolers and school-age children, but even in the first year of life recent evidence finds 11%5 to 15%6 of children spanked and as many as 34% of 1-year-old children in impoverished families in the Early Head Start National Research and Evaluation Project.
A large body of evidence has demonstrated significant associations between the use of spanking and later child aggression, but less is known about paternal spanking, the effects of spanking on cognitive development, and longer-term effects. The study found that, overall, 57% of mothers and 40% of fathers engaged in spanking when children were age 3, and 52% of mothers and 33% of fathers engaged in spanking at age 5. Maternal spanking at age 5, even at low levels, was associated with higher levels of child externalizing behavior at age 9, even after an array of risks and earlier child behavior were controlled for. Father's high-frequency spanking at age 5 was associated with lower child receptive vocabulary scores at age 9. These results demonstrate negative effects of spanking on child behavioral and cognitive development in a longitudinal sample from birth through 9 years of age. The authors conclude that further work should focus on providing information to families about the impact of spanking on child development together with the knowledge needed to move beyond punishment and towards positive parenting responses.