Children Who Get Spanked Have Lower IQs

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.

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.

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” ;-)

As you pointed out, every single poster on this thread has already figured out that this "study" is nothing but liberal propaganda.

Murray Strauss is not really a "researcher." He is a campaigner to change the laws so that parents will be arrested for spanking their children, as is already happening in Europe. (Of course they're not having many kids over there and those nations are quickly dying out.)

He's like PETA except focused on families instead of animals. Do you think that PETA is going to release a study that says that eating meat is good for you? That will happen before Murray Strauss will release an honest and unbiased study on the effects of spanking children.

Every couple years he comes out with some similar B.S. study, all of which are similarly biased and based on pre-determined conclusions.

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