Critical Summary
The issue of whether spanking leads to aggression later in life was analyzed. Data on spanking has been inconclusive in the past. Controlled studies were conducted on spanking, controlling for preexisting child aggression. It showed that the impact of spanking may be near zero on aggression later in life. A study in 2018 involved retrospective reports by adults regarding their experiences with spanking, child physical abuse, and current self-reported engagement in dating violence. Spanking was found to lead to adult dating violence, while actual exposure to child physical abuse did not show the same correlation. This discovery was puzzling to researchers because it suggests that children are more likely to learn violence from less serious physical discipline.
Reflection
This research study was very interesting to me. It raised some additional questions for me that I would love to investigate further. What this study attempted to do was explore the phenomena discovered in a study by Temple et al., 2018 which found that spanking may lead to physical aggression, more so than physical abuse. The article mentioned that it may be because spanking is more salient. Spanking is done to teach a child right from wrong whereas physical abuse has no clear motive. Therefore, I believe that children begin to resort to physical aggression as a means to fix problems in future relationships. Hence, the correlation that was discovered in the above-mentioned study.
Ferguson, C. J. (2020). Child abuse and dating violence: A replication study of temple et al., 2018. Psychiatric Quarterly, 91(3), 835-840. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-020-09742-5