Corporal punishment hurts children’s reading ability: Evidence from a national kindergarten cohort study

• In Event: 4167 - Section on Children and Youth Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Children & Youth Roundtable 5: Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Using a longitudinal sample of children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten: 2011, this study examined the association between spanking and child cognitive development, focusing on preschool and school-aged children’s experience of spanking and subsequent changes in their cognitive scores. The differences in reading and mathematics test scores between the spring of kindergarten and one year later, in the spring of their first year in grade school, were calculated to measure cognitive development. The analyses further controlled for potential confounders in the home environment (e.g. parenting stress, emotional support, and cognitive stimulation) and examined a series of interactions between spanking and the home environment to test if there were any circumstance in which spanking might work in a positive way. Children who experienced spanking displayed lower reading ability, compared to children who were not spanked. Parenting stress further explained the negative association between spanking and reading development. The more parenting stress mothers reported, the more harm spanking inflicted on their children.

Authors

• Jeehye Kang, Old Dominion University

• Ui Jeong Moon, Hannam University