8 Reasons Not To Spank Your Kids

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Spanking is linked to decreased cognitive ability and self-control

A study from the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, and Trauma found that spanking was linked to lower cognitive ability and decreased grey matter. “The more gray matter you have in the decision-making, thought-processing part of your brain (the prefrontal cortex), the better your ability to evaluate rewards and consequences,” the authors of a 2011 study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience explained, according to CNN. In other words, science suggests that hitting kids for their lack of self-control leads to even less self-control.

There’s no lesson learned

At the end of the day, our job as parents is to teach our children how to be good people. “There’s no study that I’ve ever done that’s found a positive consequence of spanking,” Gershoff told CNN. “Most of us will stop what we’re doing if somebody hits us, but that doesn’t mean we’ve learned why somebody hit us, or what we should be doing instead, which is the real motive behind discipline.”