Study: Spanking young children makes them more aggressive

In the new study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers found that of 2,500 mothers surveyed across the country, 46 percent reported no spanking in the last month, 28 percent said they spanked one to two times, and 26 percent reported spanking more than twice.

Three-year-old children of mothers who used spanking more frequently were significantly more likely to have aggressive kids later on down the road, the Tulane researchers found.

Even when controlling for other factors that affect child aggression by age five, such as parental neglect, maternal depression and stress, and the child’s aggressive tendencies as a toddler, researchers found that maternal aggression begets childhood aggression. Toddlers who are spanked were more likely to grow into kindergarteners that bully, hit, and were destructive and disobedient.