newswire: 8/20/20
- Gen-X and Millennial parents are spanking their kids less than previous generations did. A new analysis reports that from 1993 to 2017, the share of parents who reported spanking a child fell sharply from 50% to 35%. (JAMA Pediatrics)
- NH: The data here come from Monitoring the Future, the national panel out of the University of Michigan. From 1993 to 2017, researchers surveyed nearly 16,500 35-year-old parents with kids ages 2 to 12. In 1993, 50% of parents reported spanking their children at least several times a year. By 2017, this had fallen to 35%.
- This decline occurred among both mothers (declining from 48% to 35%) and fathers (from 52% to 36%). The group with the highest rate of spanking, parents of kids ages 2 to 4, saw the biggest decline (from 60% to 39%).
- At the start of the survey in 1993, the participating parents were late-wave Boomers born in 1957. The prevalence of spanking began to fall sharply starting in 1995 (among parents born in 1960) until 2010 (among parents born in 1975). Since then, the rate has stabilized and appears to be plateauing among early-wave Millennials. In other words, the steep decline in spanking started with first-wave Xers and ended with late-wave Xers.
- Whatever Gen-Xers recollect about how they themselves were raised as kids, spanking is not among the positive examples they necessarily want to do over again with their own kids. For many Xers who want to provide a more nurturing and protective and "attachment" parenting style, a lot of spanking is what happens when you don't have a close connection with your kids.
- Parental mores typically change from generation to generation. More to the point, parents often adopt a parenting style that represents a deliberate breaks from their own parents' style. The trend in spanking is a clear example.
