Children Abused: Beating kids until morals improves doesn't work

Wow, what a shock.  Abusing children with physical violence is as mentally and emotionally damaging as sexually abusing them.  Who would have expected that?

Pretty much everyone who has ever endured physical violence from their parents, that's who. 

Risks of harm from spanking confirmed by analysis of 5 decades of research

The more children are spanked, the more likely they are to defy their parents and to experience increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties, according to a new meta-analysis of 50 years of research on spanking by experts at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan.

The study, published in this month's Journal of Family Psychology, looks at five decades of research involving over 160,000 children. The researchers say it is the most complete analysis to date of the outcomes associated with spanking, and more specific to the effects of spanking alone than previous papers, which included other types of physical punishment in their analyses.

"Our analysis focuses on what most Americans would recognize as spanking and not on potentially abusive behaviors," says Elizabeth Gershoff, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. "We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents' intended outcomes when they discipline their children."

I have asked a question to every person who attempts to justify "spanking" (a/k/a child abuse):

If spanking kids is okay when they disobey or do something wrong (e.g. break something), does that mean your partner or employer can do the same if you do the same things?  Unlike a child, an adult who has the knowledge and education to know better.

Unsurprisingly, defenders of child abuse say "No".  In their hypocritically "thinking", it's perfectly okay to physically and mentally abuse a child who can't fight back and doesn't know their legal rights and protections available to them.  But hitting an adult who can call the police, file a lawsuit or physically fight back is suddenly somehow wrong.