打破循环

Studies suggest that spanking occurs in more than a third of U.S. 有孩子的家庭. It’s a staggering statistic, especially considering that there is abundant evidence that children who experience physical punishment, 比如打屁股, are at much greater risk of suffering long-term consequences, according to School of Social Work Professor Catherine 泰勒. “They experience many of the same poor outcomes as children who are physically abused,” 泰勒 said.

泰勒, a specialist in child-abuse prevention who came to 太阳城网赌平台 in 2020 after fifteen years at Tulane University, has researched physical punishment’s deleterious effects. 在一个 太阳城官网, she found that the odds of a child being aggressive at age 5 increased by 50 percent if he or she had been spanked more than twice a month at age 3. 另一项太阳城官网 she coauthored found that teenagers who had experienced physical punishment as children were significantly more likely to commit dating violence.

Now 泰勒 is testing strategies to prevent spanking and break the cycle of violence. Her most recent project centers on interventions with parents. She recruited more than 800 mothers in New Orleans to take part in short educational programs designed to give parents alternatives to spanking. 一个程序, called Triple P-Level 2, introduces the principles of positive parenting, such as praising and reinforcing good behavior and setting up rules and expectations that are aligned with a child’s age and stage of development. 另一个程序, 玩好, presents parents with different methods for responding to an aggressive child.

“I’m examining these two programs to see if they can change parenting attitudes and behaviors,” 泰勒 said of the initiative, 哪个是由 Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “如果是这样的话, then implementing these brief, low-cost programs on a wide scale could help reduce rates of child physical abuse.”

泰勒 is optimistic that the use of spanking can be reduced. “Physical punishment persists because it’s normal for parents to do what they learned from their parents,”她说。. “But as the science and new recommendations get out, it’s gradually declining.” Indeed, the prevalence of spanking has been trending downward in the U.S. in recent decades, and according to 泰勒的太阳城官网, nearly three-quarters of American pediatricians do not approve of the practice. 与此同时, sixty countries—nearly one-third—now ban the use of physical punishment for children, up from just four countries in 1992, 根据 Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children.

The key is to let parents know that there are effective alternatives, and 泰勒 believes the interventions she’s testing will do just that. “We want to get the message out to parents in the most effective way possible,”她说。, “所以,, for the next generation of children, physical punishment becomes a thing of the past.”