No evidence to justify ban on spanking

TO SMACK or not smack a child is a hotly debated question. In fact, even researchers differ in their opinions.

Nowhere do studies state conclusively that smacking a child leads to violence or abuse of others in later life, or affected brain development.

Physical abuse of a child such as slapping, kicking, punching, beating with a strap, hurling a kid to the ground will, no doubt, damage a child’s well-being. A one-off smack on the bottom does not qualify.

Dr Ashley Frawley, senior lecturer at Swansea University, states: “If it was true that smacking causes brain damage, then most of humanity throughout all of human history would have been severely damaged.”

Dr Elizabeth Gershoff, of the University of Texas, states: “It is the frequency and severity of spanking that can have negative effects.”

With regard to Sweden’s smacking ban, associate professor of psychology Robert Larzelere, of the University of Nebraska, says: “Evidence suggests the ban has failed to achieve (its) aims. Far from any decrease in violence there has been a sharp increase in child abuse and child-on-child violence.”

JR WHITLOCK | Germiston