Spanked Children May be More Likely to be Criminals as College Students

Do you spank your children? You may be setting them up for some rule breaking in the future. Researchers have discovered that university students who were spanked in their youth are more likely to engage in criminal behavior. The findings reveal a little bit more about how a person's childhood can shape them for the rest of their lives.

In order to examine what might be impacting university student criminality, the researchers looked at criminality trends in students in 15 countries using nine measures of criminality. The measures were criminal beliefs, antisocial personality, father assaulted by child in previous year, mother assaulted by child in previous year, physical assault of partner in previous year, severe physical assault of partner in previous year and others.

The researchers also took into account other facts. More specifically, they factored in parental education, misbehavior as a child, loving and positive approach to correcting misbehavior, student gender, student age and nation. In the end, they found that parents who took a loving and positive approach but also spanked their children seemed to cause a higher rate of criminality.

"So many parents and child psychologists believe that if spanking is done by loving and helpful parents, it has no harmful effect," said Straus, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This study and only one other study I know of that empirically investigated this believe found that it is not true. Spanking seems to be associated with an increased probability of subsequent child behavior problems regardless of culture and regardless of whether it is done by loving and helpful parents. Children need lots of guidance and correction, but not by being physically attacked under the euphemism of 'spanking.'"

Positive parenting decreased the probability of subsequent crime--mainly for nonfamily crime. Even though positive parenting was associated with less crime by students, though, the relation of spanking to crime remained for all nine aspects of crime. In fact, the researchers found that those spanked by both parents had the greatest increase in criminality for eight of the nine criminality measures.

The findings reveal how spanking, even in a positive environment, is not necessarily the best tool to use when correcting a child's behavior. It also shows the influence that early childhood can have on a person. The findings reveal further insight into child rearing.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology in Atlanta, Georgia.