Spanking is in the news again, thanks to a popular singer and a Texas psychologist.Singer Kelly Clarkson took heat from spanking critics last week for an off-the-cuff comment during a radio interview acknowledging she occasionally spanked her 3-year-old daughter. The 35-year-old mother said, “I’m not above a spanking, which people aren’t necessarily into,” adding, “I don’t mean like hitting her hard, I just mean a spanking.”
The comment came a few weeks after the release of yet another highly publicized study contending that spanking causes long-term harm in children. The study’s author, University of Texas at Austin professor and developmental psychologist Elizabeth Gershoff, has studied spanking for two decades. She believes the verdict is in: Spanking is bad for kids.
But parents are either unconvinced, or they are not listening. Despite a slight decline in the last 30 years, two-thirds ...