Wall Street Journal, New York, 9 June 2000

Families

Spanking Makes a Comeback

Tired of Spoiling the Child, Parents Stop Sparing the Rod; Dr. Dobson vs. Dr. Spock

(extracts)

More than five decades after Dr. Spock sent corporal punishment to the woodshed, spanking is making a comeback. A growing number of parents -- many of whom were never spanked themselves -- are shunning the experts, defying disapproving friends and neighbors, and giving their kids a slap on the bottom, the hand or the leg.

Web sites popular with parents, such as iVillage.com and Oxygen.com, are filled with chat-room buzz from pro-spankers. Just last year, both Okalahoma and Nevada passed laws explicitly giving parents the right to spank their children.

Even House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt last year admitted that he has spanked his three kids, noting that his mother disciplined him with a switch -- and he turned out fine.

So why the return to tough love? Other methods simply don't work, frustrated parents say. Sondra Thompson, a stay-at-home mother of six in Corsicana, Texas, turned to spanking after bombing with such gentler tactics as "time-outs" and stern lectures. ..... "I hear people who talk about how awful spanking is," says Ms. Thompson. "Their kids are usually maniacs."

In a recent Harris poll, nearly 70% of respondents said they think young adults and children don't have as much discipline as they need. Meanwhile, with communities everywhere struggling to explain school shootings and other teen crime, many are blaming lax parental control.

.........

While there are no definitive studies of how many parents spank, many pediatricians, psychologists and researchers say the numbers are on the rise. Kevin Ryan, director of the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character Development at Boston University, says parents are starting to reject the politically correct notion that children are too fragile to spank.

The notion took hold after World War II as Benjamin Spock, the influential paediatrician, began warning that corporal punishment can traumatize children and trigger more aggressive behavior. ..... Some critics have even equated spanking with out-and-out abuse.

Nonsense, says Judy Ussery of Savannah, Ga., who has tried -- and failed -- with everything from confiscating favorite toys to outright bribes. Although Ms. Ussery was never spanked as a child, she says her kids are a whole lot worse than she was: "I got the child my mother wished on me."

Emerging Research

While academic thinking on the subject has long been dominated by Dr. Spock's point of view, an emerging body of research suggests that spanking might not be such a bad thing after all. In one decade-long study, Diana Baumrind of the University of California-Berkeley found that parents who combined positive encouragement and a reasonable level of discipline -- including spanking -- had the best outcomes, as defined by rough measures of self-worth and personal achievement.

Robert Schwebel, a psychologist who hosts a popular parenting discussion group on iVillage.com, says about one-third of the people on his site openly support spanking, up considerably since the site began four years ago.

.....

Christen Goertel, a Stamford, Conn., mother, faced the "to spank or not to spank" dilemma at a recent community picnic. Her three youngsters wouldn't sit still, a playful game of tag got out of hand .... For a moment, Mrs. Goertel says she was definitely tempted to spank the kids -- but something stopped her.

The reason: The picnic was in honor of National Spank Out Day, an antispanking program sponsored by a non-profit group. "Oh, we spank," Mrs. Goertel confesses, taking a pause from corralling her children during the picnic. "We just came to get out of the house."