The UCL study also found physically punished children were more likely to struggle in school
The study, using data from 19,000 children born in the UK in the early 2000s, also found that teenagers experiencing physical punishment in early childhood were markedly more likely to bully siblings and others or engage in cyberbullying.
The effects of smacking appeared most immediately in behaviour problems among infants, while repeated experience of physical punishment at ages three, five and seven was associated with lower literacy.
Yeah no shit. Who the fuck is still hittin’ helpless children? (I know where it comes from, but still…)
last I checked, you were still allowed to hit your own children in the UK
Yeah no shit. Who the fuck is still hittin’ helpless children? (I know where it comes from, but still…)
I mean, I’m 33 in the USA and was raised with my father hitting us with a belt when we made our mom mad when he was at work or out drinking or if we embarrassed them and neither of them think any of it was wrong to do 🤷♂️
Yup. I remember confronting my mom in my 20s about her whipping me as a kid. She said she should’ve done it more. Once I pointed out that our ancestors likely learned about the practice from their slave masters and carried it down until it reached our generations, it changed her tune though.
guys seriously … Science literacy is important. That especially goes for the incompetent editors at the guardian. This is NOT a study. This is a blog post describing that the particular UCL research group got a research grant accepted. In other words, they got grant money, so they can produce research on this topic IN THE FUTURE. Notice, that everything in that post is written in future tense except for the paragraph called “Research to date” and there is NO RESULTS.
Yes of course, this correlation is obvious. That is why there has been an abundance of research done on this topic already. But of course, as is the case with pretty much every field in science, this topic remains incredibly important and doing more research there will always remain important. Research is an ongoing process and most scientific publications are minute incremental improvements in understanding. So everyone who is saying “hurr durr this is obvious, so much money wasted on such nonsense”, please shut the fuck up and LEARN TO READ
Sorry for the profanity. Having worked in research, i am quite disillusioned by the common misunderstanding of the scientific process.
Transference has been known for decades, at least
And not just transference – children learn how to relate to the world from their parents.
If their parents relate to them with violence, they will learn to relate to the world with violence.
We’ve known that for decades… that was the whole point of pushing to get rid of spanking in the 90s; kids model that behavior.
Mirror neurons gonna mirror neuron
The article doesn’t mention how they’re ruling out the standard “bad behavior causes physical punishment” interpretation.
It clearly doesn’t work
I’m not saying it does, but the evidence presented here isn’t showing that it doesn’t. Consider a toy model in which most children are “good” and never misbehave, but some children are “bad” and often misbehave. Parents physically punish misbehaving children, and physical punishment does reduce misbehavior. This model would show the same “physically punished children behave worse” outcome that the article describes.
There are studies on this. Extensive research shows that physical punishment stops immediate behavior, for a very short time. In psychology it has been established for a long long time that punishment doesn’t extinguishes behaviors. In practical terms, the behavior just resurfaces when out of the source of the punishment. In cognitive terms, punishment creates resentment, emotional disregulation, that leads to revenge behavior.
Makes sense. If an adult hits a kid to get a desired outcome, then the kid is going to learn to hit others to get a desired outcome.
Hurt people hurt people. It’s a phrase I’ve heard since forever. Nice to see scientific research is catching up to this bit of common wisdom.
I thought this was going to be an onion article
I guess the question that remains is: how much of that is due to being hit and how much due to having the genes of parents who hit their children?
You’d need a good investigation into the nature/nurture situation of adopted children. I grew up in an abusive adopted home and only discovered my biological family in my 30s; they were not abusive to the kids they had later in life. It’s been an interesting journey because I rejected my adoptive parents, their morality, their religion, their politics, and their worldview decades ago, but when I met my biological family it was like walking into the home I’d never known I was missing out on. We have uncanny similarities, senses of humor, social/political views, and atheism. Outwardly, you’d look at me and my family and think “became a product of the environment they were raised in”, except I got there without any of the nurture of their home.
There’s some amazing stories of identical twins discovering eachother at later age. I believe the claim there was that it’s among the strongest bonds between humans that there is. You’ve never met before but when you do, it all immediately just clicks.
Physical punishment (such as smacking and hitting) is the most common form of violence against children.
Quality start, these researchers have clearly never visited a daycare or preschool.
There is a severe lack of effort in ruling out correlation and an assumption of causation with physical punishment and negative outcomes for education and antisocial behaviour.
