Spanking May Lower A Child's IQ

The more a child's is spanked, the lower his or her IQ compared with others, according to a new study by one of North America's foremost child psychology experts.

U.S-based sociologist Professor Murray Straus, who studied the impact of spanking for 40 years, presented at the International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma in San Diego, California, and named it the third major U.S. study released this year demonstrating a correlation between physical discipline and a child's intelligence.

He examined the IQ scores of 1,510 children in two age groups - two to four, and five to nine - and retested the children four years later. He found that "the more spanking, the slower the development of the child's mental ability," because at a young age, children do not yet have the ability to deal with stress and get afraid of being hit. Consequently, the psychological stress slows down the rate of development of mental ability.

Straus' study took into account other potential factors that may affect a child's mental development, such as the family's socio-economic status and the parents' education levels. From surveys done by nearly 18,000 students in 32 countries, he also found that generally countries with high-national-average IQs are the nations that have banned, or do not socially accept, spanking. The exceptions were the top five countries on the average IQ list: Hong Kong Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Straus attributed the discrepancy to a stronger emphasis in those countries on academic excellence. Around the world, two dozen countries have banned spanking by parents and teachers, including Finland, Norway, and Austria.