Two studies headed by Murray Straus, a professor of sociology and co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, have found that children that are spanked have a lower IQ. Even small amounts of spanking can lower the IQ of a child.
The first study looked at 17,000 college students in 32 different countries. In this study, the people who were raised with corporal punishment had a lower IQ than the people that did not.
In the second study, published in the “Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma,” 1,500 young children only in the United States were studied. Of the children, two to four-year-olds that were spanked had IQs about five points lower than those who were not spanked at all. The difference in five to nine-year-olds was approximately three points.
Dr. Rahil Briggs, a child psychologist with the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York City states, “When you’re physical with your child, you open that floodgate, and the likelihood that it could veer into where you don’t have as much control increases. Plus, if you’re just spanking, you haven’t taught your child anything.”
What’s the good news in all of this? Spanking is on the decline. Less and less parents are looking at spanking as a means of punishment, which means that IQs should be rising. As I was growing up, almost every child was spanked. If you acted up in the store, you better be ready to get smacked, that’s all there was to it. So are our parents to blame for all of our problems in society? If we weren’t spanked, would all of our IQs be higher and would the world be a little better off? Who knows.
I know you can’t argue with cold, hard facts, but it seems a little strange to me. If I spank my child for acting like a fool at the store, will I be setting him up for failure? Did Roger Stephens lower Paige’s IQ when he smacked her face because she was bothering him at Wal-Mart? Maybe her mom has a bigger law suit than she thought.
