Parenting Tips: Should Smacking Your Child Be Prohibited? Studies Says Yes

Recent studies reveal that smacking your child promotes long term negative effects on your child's well-being and mental health. Though smacking and other forms of physical discipline may instantly correct a child's behavior, research suggests that it actually does more harm than good.

A research team from Australia came into conclusion that that spanking one's child to correct behavior does not provide positive results. It was also added that smacking your child has tons of damaging effects that can highly affect his development.

Dr. Elisabeth Gershoff pointed out the conclusion of the study where it was substantiated that smacking you child to impose discipline does more harm than good. She mentioned that the long term effect of smacking your child includes poor social skills and aggression.

"We found that although parents use spanking or smacking with the goal of improving their children's behavior, it is linked consistently with the opposite outcome," Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff, told News Au. "The more children are spanked, the more aggressive and poorly behaved they are. Spanking is also associated with several unintended outcomes."

She then added that smacking does not have any positive connotation when it comes to discipline. Gershoff also explained that smacking is unnecessary when it comes to discipline as there are countless ways to impose correction.

"Given our findings that smacking does no good for children and instead puts them at risk for harm," Dr Gershoff added, "I hope that parents will reconsider using physical punishment with their children in the future and seek out positive disciplinary methods. Smacking is never necessary and is almost always counter-productive."

Contrary to the previous study, Telegraph reports that smacking your child is perfectly fine, as long as they know that they are loved. The report cites a different study, revealing that smacking one's child is acceptable as long as it is being done for all the right reasons.

As a parent, do you think smacking should be involved when disciplining your child? Do let us know through the comment section below.