Ask any busy parent of preschool children: Early evening can be a stressful time. Now a small new study that audiotaped families soon after they returned home from work and day care suggests that spanking is surprisingly common.
Among 33 families, the researchers discovered 41 incidents of spanking or hitting children in 15 different families over a six-night period. What's more, the spanking didn't seem to resolve problems. After being hit, children were misbehaving again within 10 minutes in about 75 percent of the incidents.
The study was published online recently in theJournal of Family Psychology.
The research was originally designed to study the impact of yelling and to test the value of using audio recorders to do research on families, said lead study author George Holden, a professor of psychology at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He expanded the scope of the research after studying the tapes.
Holden found that parents who yell are more likely to spank their children. He also discovered that audiotaping is more accurate than are self-reports, when parents estimate how much yelling and spanking occur in their homes. "We did show that it's a very rich way to capture a wide assortment of information that is often ignored," he said.
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