Part two:
Where is Evidence That Non-Abusive Corporal Punishment Increases
Aggression?
Two recent reviews of the literature on parental corporal punishment have found few
methodologically sound studies. Further, hardly any of the soundest studies found
detrimental child outcomes associated with corporal punishment. This paper explores
whether there is evidence that the outlawing of corporal punishment by parents in Sweden
and other countries has had any discernible effect, particularly on child abuse and, to a
lesser degree, on child outcomes such as aggression.
Lyons, Anderson, and Larson (1993) attempted to review all journal articles on corporal
punishment by parents from 1984 through 1993. Only 24 of the 132 articles (17%)
included any empirical data on corporal punishment. Less than half of those (11)
investigated corporal punishment as a possible cause of some other variable. Most (83%)
of the studies were cross-sectional, and only one made any attempt to exclude child abuse
from the measure of corporal punishment.
They concluded that there was empirical evidence supporting one of three hypotheses:
Several studies found that parents were more likely to use corporal punishment themselves
if their parents had used it. There was no sound evidence that corporal punishment was
ineffective, nor that it was associated with child aggression.
Larzelere (in press) built on their review by extending the search of peer-reviewed articles
to the period 1974 to 1995 plus older articles that met the inclusion criteria. The inclusion
criteria were designed to exclude studies that were cross-sectional or whose measures
emphasized the severity of usage of corporal punishment. Only 18 studies were found that
both met the two inclusion criteria and limited the sample to children under 13 years of
age. The 8 strongest studies found beneficial outcomes of corporal punishment, usually in
2- to 6-year-olds. The 10 other studies were prospective (6) or retrospective (4). Three of
them found detrimental outcomes, but only 1 of those 3 made any attempt to exclude
abuse from its measure of corporal punishment. Further, none of the 10 studies controlled
for the initial level of child misbehavior. This seems to be an important methodological
problem, since the frequency of every type of discipline response tends to be positively
associated with child misbehavior, whether the associations are cross-sectional or
longitudinal (Larzelere, Sather, Schneider, Larson, & Pike, 1996; Larzelere, Schneider,
Larson, & Pike, in press). Finally, no alternative discipline response in any of the 18
studies was associated with more beneficial child outcomes than was corporal punishment,
whereas 7 alternatives were associated with more detrimental child outcomes, mostly in 2-
to 6-year-olds.
These reviews suggest that the empirical linkage between nonabusive corporal punishment
and aggression comes only from cross-sectional studies, studies of teenagers, studies
measuring particularly severe forms of corporal punishment, and, perhaps, studies of
punitiveness. This led us to ask how well current societal experiments are working in
countries that have outlawed all forms of parental use of corporal punishment.
In 1979, Sweden passed a law prohibiting all corporal punishment by parents. This was
hailed as a crucial step in the effort to reduce child abuse (Deley, 1988; Feshbach, 1980;
Ziegert, 1983). Several countries have passed similar laws since then (Norway, Denmark,
Finland, Austria, and Cyprus), and organizations have formed to advocate against parental
corporal punishment throughout the world (e.g., End Physical Punishment of Children
[EPOCH]: Radda Barnen, no date).
This movement represents one of the most sweeping changes ever advocated by social
scientists. In the United States, for example, about 90% of parents have spanked their
3-year-old children in the past year (Straus, 1983; Wauchope & Straus, 1990). Some
social scientific research has been used to support the anti-spanking position (e.g., Hyman,
1995; Straus, 1994), but the reviews summarized above have found such support coming
primarily from methodologically poor studies. Given the inconclusiveness of relevant
research and the importance of the issue, it is desirable to know whether child abuse has
decreased in Sweden following their 1979 anti-spanking law. Accordingly, this article asks
two inter-related questions: (1) To what extent have social scientists evaluated the effect
of the 1979 anti-spanking law in Sweden, and (2) what do those evaluations indicate about
the effects of the anti-spanking law in reducing child abuse? We also report one finding
about Swedish trends in assaults by minors discovered during our study.
Literature Search for Evaluations
Two procedures were used to find evaluations of the effects of Sweden's anti-spanking
law. First, PsycLit was searched from 1974 through June of 1995 for all publications that
included "Sweden" or "Swedish" and either "punishment" or "spanking" in their abstracts.
Second, Social Sciences Citation Index was used to identify all articles citing Gelles and
Edfeldt (1986) through April 1995, because their study reported a well-done survey of
Swedish child abuse rates one year after the anti-spanking law was passed.
Empirical Evaluations of Sweden's Anti-Spanking Law
Five published studies and one unpublished paper were found that included any empirical
information relevant for evaluating the 1979 anti-spanking law. Ziegert (1983) published a
conceptual, preliminary article on why the law should be effective. His only empirical data
was from a Swedish opinion poll showing that the percentage of respondents considering
corporal punishment to be necessary had dropped from 53% in 1965 to 35% in 1971 to
26% in 1979 and 1981. In an article comparing Swedish and American use of corporal
punishment, Solheim (1982) reported that 26% of Swedish respondents considered
corporal punishment necessary in 1978. Like Ziegert (1983), Solheim's (1982) article was
mostly nonempirical, discussing such issues as court decisions about corporal punishment
in schools, the 1979 law, and expert opinions. Together these two articles show that the
decline in support for the necessity of parental corporal punishment in Sweden preceded
the 1979 law, and it did not decrease thereafter, at least through 1981.
A third article reported the rate of child homicides in various European countries,
comparing 1973/1974 with approximately 1987/1988 (Pritchard, 1992). Note that this
compared statistics before and after the 1979 law. The Swedish child homicide rate was
the sixth lowest of the 17 countries at both time periods. However, it nearly doubled from
1973/1974 to 1986/1987. Sweden's 93% increase in its child homicide rate was the fifth
largest percentage increase among the 17 countries. It should also be noted that the rate of
accidental baby deaths in Sweden was the lowest of the 17 countries at both time periods.
Unlike the child homicide rate, it decreased by 67% between the two time periods,
although 10 of the other 16 countries decreased their accidental baby death rates by an
even larger percentage.
A fourth article compared child abuse rates among university students at one Swedish
university compared to one American university as reported in a 1981 survey (Deley,
1988). Because these were retrospective reports, they were child abuse rates during the
1960s and the 1970s as these students were growing up, a time period preceding the 1979
law. The critical question asked whether a spanking had ever left physical marks that
lasted for more than 10 minutes. Two percent of the Sweden students reported receiving
such physical marks from a spanking, compared to 9.5% of the American students.
Although this is far from a representative sample, this suggests that the child abuse rate in
Sweden was only 21% of the American child abuse rate in the 1960s and 1970s (i.e., 2.0
divided by 9.5 = .21).
The fifth and best study used telephone surveys of a nationally representative sample of
Swedish parents to measure the rates of spanking and of child abuse in 1980 (Gelles &
Edfeldt, 1986). It used the Conflict Tactics Scale, which was also used to measure the
prevalence of spanking and child abuse in two National Family Violence Surveys in the
USA (Straus & Gelles, 1986; Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980). Gelles and Edfeldt
(1986) compared their 1980 Swedish survey only with the 1975 National Family Violence
Survey. They concluded that a smaller percentage of parents were spanking their children
in Sweden than in the United States, but that there were no significant differences in child
abuse rates.
It would have been more appropriate, however, to compare their 1980 Swedish survey
with the 1985 National Family Violence Survey in the USA (Straus & Gelles, 1986),
which reported a 47% lower rate of child abuse in the United States than in 1975. For one
thing, the 1980 Swedish survey was closer to the 1985 USA survey in its method, because
both used telephone interviews. In contrast, the 1975 USA survey used face-to-face
interviews. Table 1 gives the percentage of Swedish and United States parents reporting
the use of various forms of physical aggression in both national surveys in the United
States and the national survey in Sweden. In contrast to Gelles & Edfeldt (1986), we
report whether the Swedish rate was significantly different from the mean USA rate from
both the 1975 and the 1985 surveys. This approach represents a compromise on the issue
of which USA survey is the most appropriate comparison, and it assumes that the 1980
rates in the USA might have been halfway between the 1975 and the 1985 rates.
As can be seen, significantly fewer Swedish parents spanked or hit their child with an
object, compared to USA parents. Nonetheless, 27% of Swedish parents reported
spanking or slapping their child in the past year, reflecting imperfect compliance with the
law. In contrast, most of the more serious types of physical aggression occurred more
often in Sweden one year after passing the anti-spanking law than they did in the United
States. The rate of beating a child up was three times as high in Sweden as in the United
States, the rate of using a weapon was twice as high, and the overall rate of Very Severe
Violence was 49% higher in Sweden than the United States average from the 1975 and
1985 surveys. Except for weapon usage, all of these differences were significantly
different using a test of differences between proportions (Downie & Heath, 1974, chap.
13), p < .05. In addition, the rate of pushing, grabbing, or shoving was 39% higher in
Sweden than the average rate in the United States, p < .001. Thus, the rate of spanking
was significantly lower in Sweden than in the United States, but the rate of other forms of
physical aggression, including child abuse, was significantly higher in Sweden than in the
United States.
Because there were so few published studies with relevant empirical data, we also
included an unpublished field study by Haeuser (1988) and sought additional data from
Swedish sources. As co-founder of EPOCH-USA, an organization advocating the banning
of all corporal punishment in the United States, Haeuser (1988) explicitly wanted to
"promote positive visibility of this Swedish law in the U.S. and garner U.S. support for the
possibility of promoting U.S. parenting norms which avoid physical punishment" (p. 2).
Her paper was based on her 1981 and 1988 field visits to Sweden, using extensive
interviews of 7 parents and 60 personnel in government, health and human services, and
schools.
In the summary, she concluded, "Most, if not all, believe the law has not affected the
incidence of child abuse" (p. iii). Specifically, she reported that concerns about sexual
abuse and youth gang violence had superseded concerns about physical child abuse by
1988. She also reported that she observed toddlers and young children often hitting their
parents in her 1988 visit.
According to her, "In 1981 both parents and professionals agreed that parents had not . . .
found constructive alternatives to physical punishment [within the two years since the law
was passed]. For most parents the alternative was yelling and screaming at their children,
and some believed this was equally, perhaps more, destructive" (p. 22). Haeuser went on
to report that most Swedish parents had developed firmer discipline techniques by 1988.
Haeuser (1988) concluded that the child abuse rate was lower in Sweden than in the USA
based on Swedish police statistics of 6.5 cases of physical child abuse per 1000 children in
1986. Haeuser compared this to a "U. S. rate of 9.2 to 10.7" per 1000 (Haeuser, 1988, p.
34), but acknowledged, "Since the Swedish police data omits child abuse cases known to
social services but not warranting police intervention, the actual Swedish incidence rate is
probably higher" (p. 34).
However, the American survey that she cited (National Center on Child Abuse and
Neglect [NCCAN], 1988) indicated that the basis of the rate of 9.2 or 10.7 per 1000
differed from the Swedish police statistic in two ways. First, the USA rate included sexual
and emotional abuse as well as physical abuse. Second, the USA rate included not only
cases known to police, but also cases known to at least one professional across a wide
range of occupations, including those in child protection services, public health, education
(schools, daycare centers), hospitals, mental health, and social services. If limited to only
physical abuse, the USA rate was only 4.9 or 5.7 known to at least one of these
professionals, depending upon the definition of physical child abuse. If limited to all three
kinds of abuse known specifically to police or sheriffs, the USA rate was only 2.2 per
1000 (NCCAN, 1988).
The most relevant statistics we have obtained from Sweden are police-record trends in
physical abuse of children under 7 years of age (Wittrock, 1992, 1995). Those records
showed a 489% increase in the child abuse rate from 1981 to 1994 (see Figure 1). The
same police records also indicated a 672% increase in assaults by minors against minors
(under 15 in Sweden) from 1981 to 1994 (see Figure 2). |
