By Elizabeth Landau
(CNN) -- Think a little spanking won't do much harm to kids? New research says the effects can be long-lasting. 
Children are too young to understand when parenting behavior is wrong, a social psychologist says. 
Experts say "popping" kids can do more harm than good. A new study of more than 2,500 toddlers from low-income families found that spanking may have detrimental effects on behavior and mental development. "We're talking about infants and toddlers, and I think that just, cognitively, they just don't understand enough about right or wrong or punishment to benefit from being spanked," said Lisa Berlin, the study's lead author and research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University. Berlin and colleagues found that children who were spanked as 1-year-olds tended to behave more aggressively at age 2, and did not perform as well as other children on a test measuring thinking skills at age 3. The study is published in the journal Child Development. See more at http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/16/spanking.children.parenting/index.html |
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