please...
Posted on 09/24/2009 7:16:10 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Spanking can get kids to behave in a hurry, but new research suggests it can do more harm than good to their noggins. The study, involving hundreds of U.S. children, showed the more a child was spanked the lower his or her IQ compared with others.
"All parents want smart children," said study researcher Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire. "This research shows that avoiding spanking and correcting misbehavior in other ways can help that happen."
One might ask, however, whether children who are spanked tend to come from backgrounds in which education opportunities are less or inherited intelligence lower.
But while the results only show an association between spanking and intelligence, Straus says his methodology and the fact that he took into account other factors that could be at play (such as parents' socioeconomic status) make a good case for a causal link.
"You can't say it proves it, but I think it rules out so many other alternatives; I am convinced that spanking does cause a slowdown in a child's development of mental abilities," Straus told LiveScience.
Intelligence quotients
Straus and his colleague Mallie Paschall of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Maryland studied nationally representative samples of two age groups: 806 children ages 2 to 4, and 704 ages 5 to 9. The researchers tested the kids' IQs initially and then four years later.
Both groups of kids got smarter after four years. But the 2- to 4-year-olds who were spanked scored 5 points lower on the IQ test than those not spanked. For children ages 5 to 9, the spanked ones scored on average 2.8 points lower than their unspanked counterparts.
The results, he said, were statistically significant. .. ..
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Another worthless “scientific study”. It is the dumb kids who get into trouble.
Maybe the dumb ones just need more spankings!
Didn’t you read it? Your IQ could have been even higher!
LOL!
The smart kids stayed out of trouble, or didn’t get caught.
IQ tests are racist....right?
So the spanked 2-to-4 year-olds scored 5 points lower, but the 5-to-9 year-olds lost less than three... I wonder how long this trend continues...
please...
Amen. Liberals lie, is the clear message from the past few months.
Data would probably show to be massaged if a person looked at it.
What a crock. I was blistered every other day when I was a kid. My kids got spanked on a regular basis. We are all MENSA material. Just more stupid leftist twaddle from some weenie looking for a grant.
People with low IQs are highly susceptible to displaying repressed memory syndrome.
What a bunch of crap. Where is the study done over about 20 years to back this up? I was spanked as a child and I have an IQ of 141, my brother’s is slightly lower at about 135. I guess we would have had IQs of about 180 if we hadn’t been spanked. Spankings are useful when done correctly. Now if you beat a kid until their skull fractures or you punch them in the head repeatedly I could see that lowering IQ to the point they would be like an old punch drunk fighter. However, that isn’t spanking.
I think spanking is appropriate in extreme situations where a child is willfully disobedient, physically attacks other children without provoction, or delibertely damages or steals the property of others. Beyond that, it’s a very bad idea and often a case of inadequate, otherwise powerless, parents bullying the only people they think they can do it to without consequence. My parents were very much that way and it created a permanent emotional barrier between us, particularly beween my enthusiastically punishing mother and me, one that lasted until only a few years before she died. Parents, by creating that kind of barrier, often lose much of the loving relationship they’d otherwise have with their children, especially after the children grow up, and painfully discover “what goes around comes around.” It happened to my parents and I’ve never felt any great compunctions about it.
Same here. I guess mine could have been off the charts instead of just high. My dad is a genius. I wonder what he would have been if he wasn't spanked as a kid?
Perhaps the explanation is backwards— people with low IQ are more likely to beat their low IQ children.
There is no way for scientists to ethically create a control group, so this entire study is junk science.
as y’all probably already know, this is a steaming pile of unscientific BS.
1. 5 points out of 100 = 5%; never trust a study that doesn’t publish its error rate - which is probably +/- 10% in this case
2. did they control for heredity? Could it be possible that dumb children have dumb parents?
3. I was spanked as a child only when I did something dangerous or disrespectful (the same criteria we use on our children), and my IQ is way above average. Most likely because my parents were highly intelligent, and I was raised to think for myself.
4. dumb people will probably believe this pseudoscience - yet will continue to spank their children “at random” because it seems to work.
5. otherwise intelligent people with terminal groupthink infections (you know, “liberals”) will cite this study as proof of the barbarity of spanking, and will thus continue to let their children run amuck and never mature - guaranteeing more undisciplined liberals in the future...
...which is probably the real agenda of this “study” ;-)
One more thing: one can take equivalent IQ tests multiple times and the results will vary by more than 5 points!
AS IF I want to raise a clever Devil!
1) Faith In Christ
2) Strong under stress
3) Works Hard
4) Does not give up
... are a lot better than “high IQ” and will take a person much farther.
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