Spanking your children is not good for them.
A huge meta-analysis by Elizabeth Gershoff, done in 2016 of 160,000 children, found that spanking was either a net negative or neutral, but not positive. There are other discipline techniques that work better.
In other words, if you were spanked, but you turned out fine, it was despite spanking, not because of spanking.
I’ve spoken about this at length here at Bare Marriage, most notably in these posts and podcasts:
- Can Christians please stop talking about disciplining babies?
- What does the research say about spanking?
- On Spanking: When you think you’re following the Bible, but you’re really just following your own interpretation
- The Sexual Element in Spanking Children: Let’s have an uncomfortable conversation
- What Does Spanking Teach Kids about how Love Should Hurt?
- PODCAST: How to Misuse Statistics about Spanking
But I’m not primarily a parenting blog. I’m a marriage and sex blog.
And I can’t do everything.
That’s why I’m so thrilled that Marissa Burt, and others, have stepped into the gap recently to write passionately about what the Bible says about spanking, and what research says about it–and how these are not actually at odds.
There are some awesome books coming next year about parenting and spanking (I’ve read early copies to endorse them!). But in the meantime, Marissa’s been burning up the internet with a number of amazing articles and social media posts about spanking.
I know this is a hard topic for many to read about. So many of us were taught that we had to spank and that it was Christian to spank, and it’s all tied up in our identity. I get that. But please read the articles I’ve listed above, and then read what Marissa’s got to say, too, because this is important!
Today, with her permission, I’d like to share part of a longer article she wrote about why Christian parents often have such a hard time giving up spanking. She listed 20 reasons; I’m going to list the 10 that most resonated with me, but please go read the whole thing!
Here’s Marissa:
Why do Christian parents continue to spank?
1. Parents may erroneously believe that the Bible (or God) requires it of them.
This is the biggest hurdle to inviting parents to consider alternate methods, because there is a persistent belief that “God’s ways are higher.” So research, increasing knowledge of child development, adult children naming the harms, parental distress over having to hit small children—any objection will come secondary to a desire to obey God. And this is why I spend so much time making an exegetical and hermeneutical case against the corporal punishment of small children.
2. Parents may not know any alternate approaches.
Many Christian parenting resources focus on spanking or offer it as the primary method. Even when it’s presented as a “last resort,” it becomes something parents will rely on to gain desired behavioral compliance.
3. Parents may have been told to spank by authority figures
like respected older parents, teachers or even pastors. New parents and new converts are especially vulnerable to this.
4. Parents may not want to rethink ideas about authority
or specific theological beliefs like penal substitutionary atonement.
5. Parents may believe their children deserve a spanking.
Sometimes you hear adults claim: “I was spanked, and I deserved it,” or “I never did that again.” You may also hear parents joke: “He was asking for a spanking.” Or, “the day always goes better after a spanking.”
6. Parents may place a high-value on first-time obedience and well-behaved children.
Corporal punishment thus becomes the primary means to “train” children to obey right away, all the way, and with a happy heart. Parents may wonder: if I don’t spank, how will I get my children to obey?
7. Parents may not believe spanking is that big of a deal.
You may hear people say: “I was spanked, and I turned out fine.” Whether that’s accurate or not, parents make their own experience the norm and fail to consider that other individuals may be impacted differently.
8. Parents may believe that spanking prevents specific social ills.
Parents may suggest that various cultural problems are due to children not being spanked enough or express fear of what might happen if children aren’t spanked. This is impossible to substantiate, but it persists across generations.
9. Parents may hold a false binary.
They may believe either I spank or I am a permissive parent, either I spank or I do not discipline.
10. Parents may be abusive.
Some parents enjoy the feeling of power and capacity to dominate the will of another or may believe it is their God-given right to do so.
Thank you, Marissa! Again–I like all of her 20 points, and I’ve condensed them here.
She’s been writing up a storm all over social media about this, and I want to add a few more things she’s said and point you to some other posts.
Do we need to spank in order to keep our kids following God?
Marissa contends that spanking, or corporal punishment, is inherently abusive. However, in many Christian homes it isn’t just seen as a valid means of disciplining a child; it’s framed as God’s ordained child-rearing method. If you’re not spanking your child, you’re “sparing the rod” to “spoil” the child. This, Marissa argues, will have the inevitable consequence of skewing who God is to that child later in life:
“A child may be able to grow up & leave an abusive parent, but where does one go from a God who requires abuse?
This is why I spend so much time making a hermeneutical/exegetical argument against the corporal punishment of children.”
It is so tragic that Christian leaders are actively teaching their congregants, readers, and listeners that God actually requires them to physically hurt their child. If God is a God of love who says, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.””then we cannot also argue that God requires parents and caregivers to hurt their children.
Jesus doesn’t force us to obey.
Marissa beautifully articulates the issue with this doctrine on Instagram:
“Jesus did not force compliance. Jesus draws all people to Himself… The disciples do not force people to believe or punish them for not complying… Traditional Christian teaching has the Holy Spirit’s inner work as the means of our sanctification, transformation, and maturation. We are not beat or punished into Christlikeness.”
Most Christians will agree with this and find themselves nodding along with Marissa’s assertions. But then she goes on to point out that our beliefs on these things shift when we talk about children. Suddenly, it becomes acceptable to physically punish a human being for not conforming to an ideal of spirituality or holiness we expect as adults.
And that has devastating impact on the child’s view of what love is and who God is:
“…they are the ones who will be on the receiving end of painful punishment from devout (or otherwise) parents. They will be the ones who will be told their pain is a measure of their parent’s love. They will be offered a framework of a God who finds value in dealing out injury, whose capacity is to bring about transformation is apparently reduced to the methods of human empires.”
And what will be the impact of spanking to those children?
Marissa goes into detail on that as well.
Here she describes how a young child will likely receive this message:
“Messages the child received:
- my thoughts/feelings don’t matter.
- my cries don’t matter.
- I am powerless to protect myself.
- An adult can hurt my body in private.
- Pain is connected with love & God.
- I must “be sweet” (Tripp pg. 149) & hug someone who hurts me.
- I feel good when I hear my parent say “I love you” & it happens after spanking.
- I feel relief & reassurance after I get punished.
- What I did made this bad thing happen.
- God wants this.
- God is like this.”
“But I turned out fine!”
Despite all this, there is still no shortage of adults who will say, “I was spanked and I turned out fine.” Why is that? If spanking harms children emotionally and spiritually, why do so many people claim to be unaffected?
Maybe it’s because we don’t have the language, or the insight, to recognize the impact on us.
We may not even have the same narrative within our families! Marissa also comments on the issue of rewriting history to align with one’s self-view of both their own parenting and their family environment that will refuse to acknowledge abusive behaviour:
“We also must consider memory recall which differs even w/in families.
It is not uncommon to find adult children who recount visceral details of repeated spankings while their parents sincerely state: You were hardly ever spanked.
Some of this testifies to generational patterns, but I also wonder about impact *on parents* who repeatedly ignore a child’s cries as they hurt them. I know of no studies examining what happens to a parent’s brain, trauma response, etc. when they repeatedly hit a child. As with other cases of abuse, sometimes people don’t find the words to name their experience until much later in life if at all. And how does one quantify the individual impact of an act of abuse?”
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Perhaps it’s not that these people weren’t impacted negatively by spanking. Perhaps they simply have never developed the awareness or the vocabulary to articulate the impact to them?
I would love to encourage you to go and watch this video that Marissa created in response to a pastor’s call to discipline children through spanking. She does an amazing job of unwrapping the claims and going back to the Bible to see how it aligns with God’s wish for children.
We can change things for the next generation
We don’t want kids who turn out fine DESPITE our parenting techniques. We want kids who thrive BECAUSE of our parenting techniques.
There’s so much great stuff being written about this in the parenting realm on social media right now, and I’m so excited to bring to you some great books launching next year too!
Things are changing, and we can raise the next generation in emotionally healthy, God honoring ways.
Marissa’s going to be joining us this week on the podcast as we take a look at the book The Excellent Wife by Martha Peace!
In the meantime, what do you think of what Marissa has written? Can spanking have an effect on parents too? Why do we see faith one way with adults and so differently with children? Let’s talk in the comments!
I reckon a lot of parents think it produces “good fruit” because of the immediate desired outcome- obedience. That misses the heart of the matter- God wants us to obey (give) with a glad heart. Spanking reinforces outward appearance affectation only which is Pharisaical.
Wasn’t spanked/slapped often but painful things remain, e.g. I had bad skin as a preteen. Dad worked nights so mom would hold me down on Friday nights while she dug at each blemish/blackhead, trying to make me look less “ugly.” Man, that hurt! Screaming and crying only made her dig harder and smack to keep me from squirming, (If any bruising remained come Sunday, she applied make-up concealer on my brother and I.) And I still despise the smell of rubbing alcohol because she made sure to “disinfect” us for our health and wellness.
I recall the last day that she hit (slapped) me. It was truthfully unfounded. The fear in her eyes as she realizd she’d just unleashed a fire in me she could never match at least kept her from doing that again. I was about 14.
It’s been near 2 years since I’ve spoken a word with her- that can be the long-term “fruit” of similar physical behaviors as spanking.
Oh, that’s so awful! I’m so sorry. Yes, I think a lot of parents do unleash that fire in thei kids.
Thank you for this interesting and helpful post. Yes indeed, this is mainly a marriage blog, but the parental choices we and our spouse make DO have an impact on our marriage. My husband, who always wanted to do everything “biblically” was also an advocate for spanking children, and he managed to persuade me also to do the same. This has certainly had impact on the way I feel about him today. I have managed to forgive him somehow but can’t say it increased my love for him. Quite the contrary.
I’m sorry, Emmy. I hope it didn’t impact your relationship with your kids too much!
Interesting timing. I just got back from a visit with my parents. We were staying in their home. On our last day before returning, I left my 4-year-old daughter with my dad, while I grabbed some quiet/devotion time. My mom came to get me because “things were escalating.”
So I come out and hear a hit. My child is on the ground crying, and my dad is standing over her. I asked him if he hit her, and he said yes, that he’d spanked her. He knows we do time outs. This was the first time she’d ever been hit by an adult. I picked her up and walked out of the room. I hadn’t been so enraged in a long time.
Later, when we talked about it, he said she had been “defiant” because he told her to pick up her stool, and she had said no and run away giggling. And that was unacceptable under his roof. But he apologized for “offending” and agreed to do timeout next time. And yes, I said my piece.
It’s strange, because I don’t think spanking came naturally for him. He’s a big softy at heart. It’s from church teachings on discipline and parenthood. He believes he was doing the right, biblical thing, setting her on the right path.
And now I have some insight into why it’s so hard for me to speak up when I’m hurt, and why I have an urge to “fix” things when others are fighting. Because that’s what my mom does. She tried to talk my dad down before it happened, and afterwards talked to everyone. But did it even occur to her to physically stand in the way? To directly oppose him? All she’s “supposed” to do as a good Christian woman is negotiate with a gentle spirit.
But at least I know that my child will speak up if anyone touches her. She was telling everyone, “grandpa hit me.”
It wasn’t “hard.” There wasn’t a mark. But I’ll never forget it.
Oh, wow! That would be so traumatizing!
And even the fact that your child is telling people, “Grandpa hit me!” Yep, kids get it.
This is interesting as I was raised to spank.
One day when my son was 7, caught in a lie, I told him to go sit on my bed. (My punishment for lying was 10 swats with the belt to instill the seriousness of lying.) On my way to the bedroom God spoke to my heart, “Why are you spanking him if I already died for his sin?”
Whoah. That was quite a shift for me.
I worked hard to change the script from then on but it was hard. No Christians were talking about how spanking is UNscriptural.
I’m grateful for the work of leading women in our world today!!
I’ve never had children so I don’t have to deal with this, but I was spanked less than a handful of times when I was a child. I know that my parents did the best they could and thankfully learned that spanking wasn’t the right way to punish. I didn’t know it was considered “biblical” until I was almost grown. Whenever I voiced my opinion that I didn’t believe in spanking, well meaning Christians would quote that verse in proverbs about “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Years later, I think of that verse in Psalm 23 about the shepherd’s rod comforts so in my mind, a rod is like a staff that guides. So maybe, the “spare the rod, spoil the child” has nothing to do with spanking. The rod in that verse could mean that to be a guide. If you don’t offer guidance to your child such as giving them rules, they won’t know how to behave.
Re “spare the rod, spoil the child” — you should offer to pay someone $1000 if he or she can find that verse in Scripture. Spoiler alert: you won’t hand over a red cent.
The phrase comes from a satirical poem, Hudibras, by Samuel Butler. This is the explanation from enotes.com:
“Hudibras and his squire are prisoners in the stocks. When a widow whom he had been wooing hears of his plight, she visits him… [and] pretends not to recognize the sorry specimen. After a long discussion of the possibility of matrimony between them, she offers to try to get him freed if he will consent to a whipping such as lovers endure for their ladies, and which serves Virtue and corrects the mistakes of Nature. She explains her belief:
And I’ll admit you to the place
You claim as due in my good grace.
If matrimony and hanging go
By dest’ny, why not whipping too?
What med’cine else can cure the fits
Of lovers when they lose their wits?
Love is a boy by poets styl’d,
Then spare the rod, and spoil the child.”
So the expression has more to do with BDSM than anything else. It has nothing to do with the Bible, nor even parental correction of children. People who quote it to justify spanking really don’t understand what they’re quoting!
This just blew my mind! Psalms 23 is my favorite! Dots are connecting for me. I was spanked as a child. I fled a physically abusive marriage in 2002 after my mother who spanked me as a child and was very controlling, told me I didn’t have to stay in the marriage. I was 26 yo. My childhood was very toxic with spanking and submitting to other types of abuse perpetrated by adults. Compliance was required. I believe I became a scapegoat because I sought counseling and healing, calling out what was toxic.
I think it’s hard for people to understand the effect of hearing “X causes long term harm,” when you are an adult who experienced X as a child.
It sounds like people think you’re broken, defective, or less worthy of love, marriage, children, and good things. Well, if you aren’t broken, defective, or unworthy, you aren’t going to oppose X.
One strategy is to get very specific. Imagine, “adults who were spanked as children have a higher startle response.”
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/21/04/effect-spanking-brain
Well, it’s not that you’re bad or broken if your brain is constantly scanning for threats. That doesn’t make you a crappy parent. It is, however, something you probably don’t want for your own kids.
I started out spanking my oldest when she was a toddler (spanking being an open palm on a fully clothed child’s behind), for many of the reasons Sheila listed above. Then my church endorsed flicking the hand of children even younger, and I did that with my younger child.
One day I was spanking my oldest (she was 3 1/2) because she wouldn’t stop crying over something. I told her to stop crying, and she sobbingly was able to articulate, “I want to, but I don’t know how.” That broke my heart and was a major wake-up call.
Around the same time, my younger daughter (about 1 1/2) started literally chewing on the hand where I would flick her as punishment, and developed a small wound. Clearly, something was not working.
Changing discipline strategies was scary, because it felt like stepping off of a cliff into the unknown void, and the stakes are so high when it comes to our children. It didn’t help that a lot of anti-spanking advocates are sarcastic and judgmental of people who truly love their children and want the best for them but simply don’t know better. I had found this blog around that time, and was encouraged by the compassionate and more matter-of-fact way Sheila and Rebecca treated the spanking debate.
Two other resources that were super helpful as I was learning new parenting strategies were John Gottman’s parenting book on raising emotionally intelligent children, and the Live on Purpose YouTube channel (https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq2mRDkHEBPCclxt6agg3wrLBRkL7CCwU). It’s run by a Dr of Psychology, and the parenting videos are often done with his Dr of Speech Pathology wife who works with kids. It is not expressly Christian, I have no idea their faith background, but nothing that I’ve come across from them is incompatible with a Judeo-Christian world view, which I know is important to some people.
Changing my discipline strategies has been good for not just my children but also for me. I let go of unrealistic expectations and have a much better handle on my temper, which in turns helps me react (instead of overreact) in a much more productive way when facing a child’s behavioral challenges.
So interesting! I’m glad that you went on this journey!
Excellent way to frame it, Jane!
To this day I am haunted by the agonized screams of my siblings, and my own experiences, growing up with spanking. Beating is more accurate, with a belt. I’ve been looking into EMDR because after 40 or 50 years of flashbacks, startles, etc., I cannot take it anymore. Trauma doesn’t just magically leave you, and time does NOT heal all wounds.
Obviously this has affected my relationships with my parents. One was the abuser, the other was the do-nothing allower of it. I don’t think they even realize what they’ve lost because we kids have always tried to be decent to our parents. We all got through college, married, made lives, so the abuser clearly thinks he did an A-OK job parenting, and not that we all hung in there and decided to be good and productive people despite the long-term trauma we have had to cope with from him.
So heartbreaking! I’m glad you’re all healing, but it is HARD. EMDR may be a really good idea.
I’d love it, Sheila, if you would do some study on the CSM-literature (=Cristian Spanking Manuals) that are circulating around in churches. We could start together by compiling a list of them. Here are two books to start with:
The books that had the most negative impact on me as a young mother were “Christian Family” by Larry Christensson and “You and your Child” by Chuck Swindoll, of all the people. I have read other stuff from both authors that I really appreciate. I still can’t grasp how someone like Chuck Swindoll, who has written so many good books on God’s grace, has managed to write such a horrid book on child rearing.
Compared to these two works, Dobson’s books were vanilla ice. I would not call them good either, but there were at least some nuances and some understanding of child development and age appropriate approaches.
Swindoll wrote about spanking a child until (s)he “cried softly”, and he told how he and his wife once had to spank their child four times until it happened. This “crying softly” was supposed to be a sign of submission and an indication that the discipline had reached the desired effect. Swildoll also taught that spanking should always be done with an implement, never with the hand, for the child was to learn to “fear the rod”, not the hand of the parent. It was also a good thing to place the implement on a prominent place in the house, like hanging it on the wall.
Christensson, on the other hand, put it very bluntly and said that the main purpose of spanking is to inflict pain. According to him, Paul’s warnings against “irritating your sons” was about parents, who did not hit hard and painful enough. Stuff like “this hurts me more than you” was nonsense, spanking was supposed to hurt the child a great deal. He also stated that “he who spares the rod hates his child” may actually mean that those who “spare the rod” will actually end up hating their child, because children that are not spanked will become unmanageable and will be difficult to love.
So, these two horrid books were the “tools” we started with as young Christian parents. I wonder what kind of other “resources” the others here have been unfortunate to be “supplied” with.
That’s so awful! I know Marissa Burt is analyzing so much of this for her book. I’ll mention these two to her!
Thankful that I had parents who instinctively knew this. I was hardly ever spanked (I can only remember one time) and my parents only ever smacked with an open hand on the clothed butt, NEVER with an implement. My parents figured that if they hit with an implement, they could easily inflict physical damage without realising it.
My mum was once so frustrated with my sister that she deliberately did NOT smack my sister, but stomped away to the kitchen and slapped the kitchen bench instead. What she didn’t see at the time, because she was so wound up, was that there was a thick glass Moccona jar sitting on the kitchen bench. Fifty years later, my mum still bears the scar on her right palm — yes folks, she broke that jar just by slapping down on it with her bare hand, that’s how hopping mad she was….
Moral of the story: smacking your children when you’re frustrated is a really bad idea.
I do remember getting sent to my room a fair bit! And it was always “go to your room and come out when you can do as you’re told” which seems to me a much more reasonable way of handling disobedience. It gives the child a calm space to come to terms with the fact that, in order to have the perks of living in the household, he or she must be prepared to follow the rules set by those responsible for the smooth running of the household.
I would fall in that camp that would say, “I was spanked but I turned out alright.” I’ve never really considered spanking a problem, but recently I’ve been reconsidering it more because of resources like this and looking forward to hopefully having children soon. Even if I don’t end up being against spanking I do think there are probably better methods of discipline. Thanks for sharing.
I think when we say spanking has negative consequences alternatives do need to be provided. Such as a time out. I found them beneficial because it gave me a time out to cool down. The last thing I should be doing when my son is pushing my buttons or becoming unglued is for me to engage in corporal punishment. I once read, and agree, spanking is an adult temper tantrum.
I think there is a lot of fear that if people don’t spank their kids they will turn out poorly. Some people claim crime is high and society crumbling because we don’t spank and discipline like we traditionally did. That alone is guilting people into flawed thinking.
It can be really nearly impossible to convince some people that spanking isn’t helpful despite evidence because they think science is “rigged” or can’t be trusted.
I have to wonder if some kids turn out okay in spite of spanking because their parent, later, repaired the likely injured child-parent relationship. What I’m implying is spanking later creates more work on a parents part to heal their relationship with their child. Even years later in adolescence. I think spanking is attractive because it’s a quick fix to their child’s behavior. However, the long term implications are more work needed from a parent to fix what they did to their child or the child has negative outcomes from being physically punished by their parent.
One of the classic parenting books for alternatives is How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. It gives simple advice with illustrations, but it really works!
How can parents ignore the obvious sexual overtones of spanking? So many churches teach that children should be spanked naked with belts, whips and paddles. And why are parents told to beat children on the most private and sensitive parts of their bodies? Consenting adults do they same thing to each other and we call it consensual sex. I had a (former) friend brag that she used the same sex-toy whip she and her husband played with to whip her kids naked, but of course much harder and longer. WTH? I saw the lash marks and reported her to CPS.
Good for you for reporting!
Growing up my mom would state the parental advice she got from a prominent preacher’s wife at the time in the Midwest, Sister Word.
The advice on spanking was to spank the child until the spirit of the child was broken. You could tell it had happened because the crying would be different than when it started.
And that if the child held out on changing their cry or because they had “defiant and willfull” attitudes, that you just had to hold out and be just one more step stubborn than the kid was.
This was touted as the way to do things from a “godly” woman in the church.
Looking back at that, among other advice that my parents got from the “church” I can see how damaging and how controlling it really was.
Also when that is all you know and its touted as “godly” if you do it and “ungodly” if you don’t, it can take alot of years to grow out of that mindset because you are the fish swimming against the current.
The verse I like to remember and try to implement in my parenting journey is “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?” Romans 2:4
That verse has helped me realize all the ways God has treated me, His child, and if God can treat me that way, I can treat my own children that way too.
Its been 6 years since I have spanked my children and the times we work thru the damage that spanking had done to my childrens psyche are hard but worth the hard work to get to this place of mutual trust and forgiveness and true discipline- i e. teaching, encouraging, showing and learning together.