New Study: Harsh Discipline is Associated with More Behavioral Problems
The most important finding of this study was that harsh discipline tactics don’t lead to healthy, well-behaved children.
This was a longitudinal study (meaning that the same groups of kids were studied at several different time points) of Australian children in which 5107 infants (3-19 months) were monitored several times up until age 4-5 years and 4983 preschoolers (4-5-year-olds) were monitored up until age 8-9 years. Between enrollment in the study and the final assessment, 86% and 87% of the infants and preschoolers, respectively, remained in the study. That makes this a relatively large study with a good retention rate.