Smacking is not hitting?
LOL!!!
The onus is on you, you made the claim.
I have read several books, written by or backed by multiple PhDs, that state that smacking/spanking/hitting your kids is harmful in MANY ways.
http://www.jiskha.com/social_studies...ank_child.html
http://www.nospank.net/n-j14.htm
Quote:
NEW YORK (AP) -- After analyzing six decades of expert research on corporal punishment, a psychologist says parents who spank their children risk causing long-term harm that outweighs the short-term benefit of instant obedience.
The psychologist, Elizabeth Gershoff, found links between spanking and 10 negative behaviors or experiences, including aggression, anti-social behavior and mental health problems. The one positive result of spanking that she identified was quick compliance with parental demands.
"Americans need to re-evaluate why we believe it is reasonable to hit young, vulnerable children, when it is against the law to hit other adults, prisoners, and even animals," Gershoff writes in the new edition of the American Psychological Association's bimonthly journal.
|
http://www.religioustolerance.org/spankin5.htm
Quote:
|
"The implications of these results are clear. The more someone is successful in life (not being a juvenile delinquent, not dropping out of school etc.) the less likely they were to have been physically punished as a child or the less severe the physical punishment. To put it the other way around: the more physical punishment, the more likely the person later became a criminal, high-school dropout etc." 5
|
Quote:
|
"there appears to be a linear association between the frequency of slapping and spanking during childhood and a lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorder, alcohol abuse or dependence and externalizing problems."
|
Quote:
|
"depression often is a delayed response to the suppression of childhood anger...from being physically hit and hurt..." [by parents]...Melancholy and depression have been persistent themes in the family history, religious experience, and emotional lives of Puritans, evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals for centuries....The first assaults on children's bodies and spirits generally commences before conscious memory can recall them later. The unconscious thus becomes the repository of age, resistance, and desire for revenge that small children feel when being struck by the adults they love...the ancient angers persist while the adult conscience directs rage inward upon the self." 2
|
Quote:
|
The researchers found that the children which were spanked the most as 3 to 5 year olds exhibited higher levels of anti-social behavior when observed 2 and 4 years later. This included higher levels of hitting siblings, hitting other children in school, defying parents and ignoring parental rules. Dr. Murray Straus, the co-director of the Laboratory noted how ironic it is that the behaviors for which parents spank children are liable to get worse as a result of the spanking.
|
There are more... this is sufficient.