Should You Ever Spank Your Kids?

The ladies of The View may disagree, but experts say you shouldn’t spank. Ever.

-Julie Ryan Evans

When it comes to spanking, the ladies of The View disagree … of course.

This week Sheri Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg said they aren’t opposed to an occasional swat. “I believe that there are some times when a swat is what you’ve got to do and it’s okay that other people don’t feel like that,” Goldberg said on the show this week as the group discussed parenting topics.

Joy Behr, on the other hand, said she doesn’t think anyone should ever spank a child. “We’re putting out a message to the world and to women, who are at their tethered edge and who might lose control and say it’s okay to spank and then they go over the edge.”

Elisabeth Hasselbeck is still out on maternity leave and didn’t weigh in, but we have a feeling this is one topic she just might agree on with Joy.

But despite the ladies’ mixed views, there’s little disagreement among experts when it comes to spanking. While it was parenting de rigueur for years, evidence increasingly shows that sparing the rod will not, in fact, spoil the child, but instead will spare them from some long-term damaging effects of spanking.

One new study shows shows that children who are spanked at the age of 1 are more aggressive by the age of 2, and also don’t perform as well on cognitive tests as children who weren’t spanked.

While not conclusive, there are “many other studies which have shown that kids who have been treated with hostility grow up to display hostility themselves and become more aggressive as adults,” according to Dr. Joanne Stern, a psychotherapist and mother. “Kids who have been abused grow up to become abusers. Teaching kids responsibility, internal limits and respect for authority is an important goal of parenting, but spanking may be the least effective route to get there,” she says.

Another recent study says that spanking causes a child's IQ to drop!