Domestic violence and spanking children

People who are violent or psychologically abusive to their partners are also more likely to spank their children. Researchers from Tulane University in New Orleans surveyed mothers and fathers from around 2,000 families with three-year-old children. As many as seven in ten of the families reported some form of abuse between the couples such as slaps, kicks or keeping a partner from seeing his or her family and nearly two-thirds of the toddlers in these families were spanked by their parents within the last month. The children who were most likely to be spanked were those whose parents were aggressive towards each other with mothers more likely to be the ones hitting their children. In a 2008 survey 77% of men and 65% of women agreed that a child sometimes needs a 'good hard spanking.' The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association both discourage spanking children.

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