Spanking Harms Kids, Doesn't Work And Leads To Long-Term Issues, University of Michigan Study

There’s pretty much no benefit to spanking children to discipline them, and mountains of evidence show that spanking risks harming children, both short-term and long-term. Kids become more aggressive and anti-social, have more mental health problems from childhood into adulthood and misbehave more — and are more likely to end up abused. That’s the conclusion of the most recent meta-analysis on spanking, published in the Journal of Family Psychology and involving more than 160,000 children — though it’s unlikely to settle the debate that has continued for years over whether spanking is acceptable or whether it hurts children.