Peer-reviewed article
Spanking and young children’s socioemotional development in low- and middle-income countries
Garrett Todd Pace, Shawna J. Lee, Andrew C. Grogan‐Kaylor ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined the relationship between parental spanking and socioemotional development in young children using data from 215,885 children across 62 countries from UNICEF's Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys. About 43% of children experienced or witnessed spanking in their household in the past month. The research found that spanking was associated with lower socioemotional development scores in 3- and 4-year-old children, with 95% of countries showing a negative relationship. The findings suggest spanking may harm child development on a global scale.
Key points
- 43% of children in the sample were spanked or lived in households where spanking occurred in the past month
- Spanking was associated with lower scores on a socioemotional development index for 3- and 4-year-old children
- In 59 of 62 countries (95%), the relationship between spanking and socioemotional development was negative
- No country showed that spanking was associated with higher socioemotional development
- The cross-sectional association between spanking and socioemotional development, while consistently negative, was small in magnitude
Limitations
This is a cross-sectional study, so causality cannot be established—lower socioemotional development may lead parents to spank more, rather than spanking causing poor development. The study relies on parental reports of spanking, which may be subject to social desirability bias, and the effect sizes, while consistent, are described as small.
Abstract
Spanking is one of the most common forms of child discipline used by parents around the world. Research on children in high-income countries has shown that parental spanking is associated with adverse child outcomes, yet less is known about how spanking is related to child well-being in low- and middle-income countries. This study uses data from 215,885 children in 62 countries from the fourth and fifth rounds of UNICEF's Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) to examine the relationship between spanking and child well-being. In this large international sample which includes data from nearly one-third of the world's countries, 43% of children were spanked, or resided in a household where another child was spanked, in the past month. Results from multilevel models show that reports of spanking of children in the household were associated with lower scores on a 3-item socioemotional development index among 3- and 4-year-old children. Country-level results from the multilevel model showed 59 countries (95%) had a negative relationship between spanking and socioemotional development and 3 countries (5%) had a null relationship. Spanking was not associated with higher socioemotional development for children in any country. While the cross-sectional association between spanking and socioemotional development is small, findings suggest that spanking may be harmful for children on a more global scale than was previously known.