The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio - By Steven Pinker Page 0,265

other kinds of violence.177 The second reason not to spank a child is that spanking is not particularly effective in reducing misbehavior compared to explaining the infraction to the child and using nonviolent measures like scolding and time-outs. Pain and humiliation distract children from pondering what they did wrong, and if the only reason they have to behave is to avoid these penalties, then as soon as Mom’s and Dad’s backs are turned they can be as naughty as they like. But perhaps the most compelling reason to avoid spanking is symbolic. Here is Straus’s third reason why children should never, ever be spanked: “Spanking contradicts the ideal of nonviolence in the family and society.”

Have parents been listening to the experts, or perhaps coming to similar conclusions on their own? Public opinion polls sometimes ask people whether they agree with statements like “It is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking” or “There are certain circumstances when it is all right to smack a child.” The level of agreement depends on the wording of the question, but in every poll in which the same question has been asked in different years, the trend is downward. Figure 7–17 shows the trends since 1954 from three American datasets, together with surveys from Sweden and New Zealand. Before the early 1980s, around 90 percent of respondents in the English-speaking countries approved of spanking. In less than a generation, the percentage had fallen in some polls to just more than half. The levels of approval depend on the country and region: Swedes approve of spanking far less than do Americans or Kiwis, and Americans themselves are diverse, as we would expect from the southern culture of honor.178 In a 2005 survey, spanking approval rates ranged from around 55 percent in northern blue states (those that tend to vote for Democrats), like Massachusetts and Vermont, to more than 85 percent in southern red states (those that tend to vote for Republicans), like Alabama and Arkansas.179 Across the fifty states, the rate of approval of spanking tracks the homicide rate (the two measures show a correlation of 0.52 on a scale from -1 to 1), which could mean that spanked children grow up to be killers, but more likely that subcultures that encourage the spanking of children also encourage the violent defense of honor among adults.180 But every region showed a decline, so that by 2006 the southern states disapproved of spanking in the same proportion that the north-central and mid-Atlantic states did in 1986.181

FIGURE 7–17. Approval of spanking in the United States, Sweden, and New Zealand, 1954–2008

Sources: Gallup/ABC: Gallup, 1999; ABC News, 2002. Straus: Straus, 2001, p. 206. General Social Survey: http://www.norc.org/GSS+Website/, weighted means. New Zealand: Carswell, 2001. Sweden: Straus, 2009.

What about actual behavior? Many parents will still slap a toddler’s hand if the child reaches for a forbidden object, but in the second half of the 20th century every other kind of corporal punishment declined. In the 1930s American parents spanked their children more than 3 times a month, or more than 30 times a year. By 1975 the figure had fallen to 10 times a year and by 1985 to around 7.182 Even steeper declines were seen in Europe.183 In the 1950s, 94 percent of Swedes spanked their children, and 33 percent did so every day; by 1995, the figures had plunged to 33 and 4 percent. By 1992, German parents had come a long way from their great-grandparents who had placed their grandparents on hot stoves and tied them to bedposts. But 81 percent still slapped their children on the face, 41 percent spanked them with a stick, and 31 percent beat them to the point of bruising. By 2002, these figures had sunk to 14 percent, 5 percent, and 3 percent.

There remains a lot of variation among countries today. No more than 5 percent of college students in Israel, Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden recall being hit as a teenager, but more than a quarter of the students in Tanzania and South Africa do.184 In general, wealthier countries spank their children less, with the exception of developed Asian nations like Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The international contrast is replicated among ethnic groups in the United States, where African Americans and Asians spank more than whites.185 But the level of approval of spanking has declined in all three groups.186

In 1979 the government of Sweden outlawed spanking altogether.187 The other Scandinavian countries soon joined it, followed by