Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review.

2002/01/01 by Elizabeth T. Gershoff · 2,067 citations
Psychology · Medicine · #Child Abuse and Trauma #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending #Corporal punishment #Psychology #Spanking #Child discipline #Aggression #Punishment (psychology) #Context (archaeology) #Developmental psychology #Social psychology #Poison control #Human factors and ergonomics #Compliance (psychology) #Medicine

paper · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.128.4.539

published in Psychological Bulletin 128(4), 539-579 (American Psychological Association)

openalex publication_date 2002/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/08

Abstract

Although the merits of parents using corporal punishment to discipline children have been argued for decades, a thorough understanding of whether and how corporal punishment affects children has not been reached. Toward this end, the author first presents the results of meta-analyses of the association between parental corporal punishment and 11 child behaviors and experiences. Parental corporal punishment was associated with all child constructs, including higher levels of immediate compliance and aggression and lower levels of moral internalization and mental health. The author then presents a process-context model to explain how parental corporal punishment might cause particular child outcomes and considers alternative explanations. The article concludes by identifying 7 major remaining issues for future research.

Citations

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Cited by

• Ordinary physical punishment: Is it harmful? Comment on Gershoff (2002).
• Corporal punishment, physical abuse, and the burden of proof: Reply to Baumrind, Larzelere, and Cowan (2002), Holden (2002), and Parke (2002).
• Spanking and Child Development: We Know Enough Now to Stop Hitting Our Children
• Physical Punishment, Culture, and Rights: Current Issues for Professionals
• Improving Causal Inferences in Meta-analyses of Longitudinal Studies: Spanking as an Illustration
• The effect of spanking on early social-emotional skills
• Ending the Physical Punishment of Children by Parents in the English-speaking World: The Impact of Language, Tradition and Law
• Making Valid Causal Inferences About Corrective Actions by Parents From Longitudinal Data
• Mothers' Spanking of 3-Year-Old Children and Subsequent Risk of Children's Aggressive Behavior
• Physical punishment of children: lessons from 20 years of research
• Physical Punishment and Mental Disorders: Results From a Nationally Representative US Sample
• Do nonphysical punishments reduce antisocial behavior more than spanking? a comparison using the strongest previous causal evidence against spanking
• Corporal punishment in the home [wikipedia]