A study in Canada, reported in the British Medical Journal for October 16, has shown that adults who report having received a slapping or a spanking during childhood are twice as liable to suffer later problems of alcohol or drug abuse and to show antisocial behaviour than those who had not been treated to this violence. This is disturbing news for those people who boast that they were thoroughly beaten as children and that it never did them any harm.
The subjects of the study were 4,888 individuals aged 15 to 64, and none of them had a childhood history of sexual or physical abuse apart from their spanking. The participants answered a questionnaire about frequency of spanking or slapping and another administered by interviewers calculated to estimate psychiatric disorder. The reported frequency of the violent treatment was "never" in 20 per cent, "rarely" in 41 per cent, "sometimes" in 33 per cent and "often" in 6 per cent. Individuals in the last two categories showed significantly more lifetime anxiety disorders than the others. There was an association also with major depression, but it was not significant. There was, however, a significant association between the frequency of childhood violence and that of lifetime psychiatric disorder.
It is pointed out that it will not be easy to abolish the custom of spanking by parents, since most of them, like most doctors, still believe that it is sometimes necessary for discipline in the home. There is mounting evidence, nevertheless, that the legislation in Canada and the United States and elsewhere exempting corporal punishment by parents of their own children from prosecution under the criminal code is outdated and should be changed to meet the findings of the study.