Spanking in the USA

There has been a lot of debate about spanking recently and a US study of 1,435 mothers in North and South Carolina has found that those mothers who had spanked their children in the past year were nearly three times more likely to say that they had also used harsher forms of punishment including beating, burning, kicking, hitting and shaking. The mothers who used an object to hit their child on the buttocks were more than nine times as likely to report committing other physical abuse. 45% of the mothers reported that they had spanked their child, 25% reported spanking with an object on their buttocks and 4% reported even harsher forms of punishment. Only 2% of the mothers who reported no spanking reported the use of physically abusive punishment, compared to 6% of the mothers who spanked and 12% of those who spanked with objects.

You can find out more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/08/21/new-study-finds-spanking-linked-to-physical-abuse/2800.html