A new study is out that says spanking can lead to aggression and sexual problems later in life. Spanking is a choice that parents make and leads to many emotional and opinionated conversations between parents. I personally hate to spank my kids. It’s the punishment that we use when we have tried everything else, and yes, I mean all of Dr. Phil's ideas. I really only have one child that I have really ever had to spank more than once. What is really odd is that the public schools my children go to still use spanking as punishment.
Elizabeth Gershoff, a researcher at University of Michigan's School of Social Work, says the study's findings are consistent with the literature. "I have every faith in his research," Gershoff says. "The more children are spanked, the more aggressive they are and the more likely they are to engage in delinquent or at-risk behaviors." Sexual behavior is just one example of that behavior, she says. One lesson kids learn, says Gershoff, is that if you have the power in a relationship, you can use aggression to get your way. Another: "[Kids] may learn that sometimes there's pain and fear involved in loving relationships."
Gershoff says spanking may work to gets kids' attention, but it doesn't teach them how to behave appropriately in the long-term. A little tap once in a while is going to have minimal risk, but the risk increases "the more you do it and the harder you do it," she says. "I think everything we know from the research is that it doesn't work and it might have negative side effects."
This report talks about other researchers, their findings and thoughts. It also mentions the passage in the Bible, "He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him." A pediatrition encourages parents to find a different way to discipline their children and has a assemblywomen talking about trying to pass a law about corporal punishment. Parents in her state made it known that they didn’t want her messing around with their parental rights.
I think that you can spank, but the problem is sometimes that parents spank in anger. Then the parent has the ability to over spank (meaning spanks too hard) or it leads to something more than just spanking. This is when it is out of control and the sad thing is, is that if this happened to you as a child then it is easy to do this to your own children.
We have a rule. You cannot spank out of anger. We send the child to their room and either my husband or me, depending on who is home set for at least five minutes before we go to the room and talk to the child. We usually only spank if one of our children has hit or physically hurt one of our other children. We then explain to them why what they did is wrong and why we feel like it deserves a spanking.
Each parent has their own view on spanking and some may feel that mine is wrong, but it was my choice as a parent and one I didn’t make until my older son was repeatedly physically hurting my younger son. He really didn’t mean to hurt him. He would want a toy and push his little brother down on the cement and cut his eyebrow open, push him to get him out of his rode and he would accidently fall forward an cut open his head and this was when they were just one and two year’s old.
We didn’t spank him then, it got worse as they got older and eventually we resorted to spanking him to show him what it felt like to have some pain like his brother. It did work, he rarely ever hits his brother now. They just yell back and forth and fight over each others friends.
Mom Topics 
A new study is out that says spanking can lead to aggression and sexual problems later in life. Spanking is a choice that parents make and leads to many emotional and opinionated conversations between parents. I personally hate to spank my kids. It’s the punishment that we use when we have tried everything else, and yes, I mean all of Dr. Phil's ideas. I really only have one child that I have really ever had to spank more than once. What is really odd is that the public schools my children go to still use spanking as punishment.
