Spanking 'kills kids'

As South Africa prepares itself for a law banning parents from spanking their children, a US study has found that regular beatings can cause aggression in children and impoverish their vocabulary.

Though there have been many global studies on the link between spanking and aggression, the Columbia University's findings, published in the journal Pediatrics this week, reveal that spanking is also linked to diminishing cognitive ability.

South African children's rights organisations will pay special attention to the latest findings as they finalise a draft proposal that is expected to be released for public debate next month.

The organisations are renewing their call for the Children's Act to be amended to outlaw corporal punishment in the home.

If the proposal became law, parents could be prosecuted for assault if they used a flat hand on a child's bottom.

The DA and several churches are against the proposal. The churches say a rod can be used "to drive folly out of a child".

Columbia University researchers studied children from 1500 families in 20 US cities from birth to the age of 10.

Parents revealed that they frequently spanked their children, with 57% of mothers and 40% of fathers reporting that they hit their children from when they were three years old.

Fifty-two percent of mothers and 33% of fathers spanked their children from when they were five.

When the children turned nine, researchers tested their vocabulary.

"Five-year-olds who were spanked frequently . by their father went on to have lower vocabulary scores at the age of nine," the lead author of the study, Professor Michael MacKenzie, said.

Children spanked by their mothers at the age of five, even if relatively infrequently, went on to have more behavioural problems at the age of nine, MacKenzie said.

Corporal punishment includes hitting with an object, kicking, shaking or throwing, pinching, biting, pulling hair, forcing into an uncomfortable position, and locking up or binding.

In South Africa, the call to ban spanking was first made six years ago but it was rejected by the parliamentary portfolio committee on social development.

Earlier this year, Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini said various "stakeholders" were drafting proposals on corporal punishment.

Early childhood development specialist Gill Naeser said the US research results had been released at a very important time for South Africa.

"More studies are showing that spanking does affect a child's development. I agree that children who are spanked find it difficult to communicate, because they are not given a chance to," she said.

Naeser said children who were spanked frequently had low self-esteem and learned that there was no lasting consequence for their actions.

"After two minutes, it's forgotten. They learn nothing from it. Parents who spank their children do it for the immediate result, not to teach a lesson.

"There are alternatives, such as not allowing television for a week. Taking away privileges is more effective than spanking."

But the Family Policy Institute's Errol Naidoo, convener of a recent church leaders' meeting to discuss fighting the proposals, said the US study should be taken with a pinch of salt.

"You get these studies that claim that spanking leads to violence and that people become serial killers. And then you get the testimony of real people, who were disciplined by their parents, who say they turned out to be good, fine people," he said.

"There is a liberal agenda and they are trying to push this thing that spanking is torture and that there should be no spanking whatsoever."

Naidoo said the "vast community" of South African parents agreed with spanking.

"They say I was spanked and I will spank my children. It instils values, shows them the consequence for their actions and makes good citizens out of them," he explained.

The DA has also expressed opposition to the proposed law.

The party's social development spokesman, Mike Waters, said the state had no right to tell parents how to discipline their children.

"The state should have the right to intervene only when a child is abused. We recommend that the minister reconsider this decision and refocus her energy and efforts on enforcing the current anti-child-abuse legislation," he said.