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The bottom line is that spanking is not beneficial. Period.

As you will soon discover in this article, spanking your children can actually have a number of negative results, the exact opposite of what you were trying to achieve. Over the years, many in-depth studies and research have been performed to determine if spanking is or is not beneficial and the majority shows it simply does no good at all.

I've outlined below the top five reasons why spanking children is literally a waste of your time, energy and effort.

Violence

In today's world of violence, as seen on television, in games, movies, and so on, the last thing we need to be doing is exposing our children to even more violence at the hands of the parents. After all, how can you teach a child not to hit or be violent if you are spanking and hitting them? Spanking children teaches your child about violence, plain and simple. As a result, many children who are spanked by their parents, feel they have the right to hit when they are disappointed or angry with someone, which is or course not acceptable.

Authority

When a parent spanks a child, the child often views this as overwhelming authority gone badly. Then, going into their teenage years, and even adulthood, this same child begins to struggle with authority in the workplace or from law enforcement officials. Having been under the control of the parent who spanked them, these children desperately want to escape that.

Reinforcement

To teach your children right from wrong, you will get much better results by providing positive reinforcement and communication rather than by spanking them. In other words, reward your child when he or she does something right, which encourages more of the right things. The same is true with communication in that if more parents were to honestly, lovingly, but firmly communicate with their children, the need for spanking would be eliminated all together.

Barriers

Spanking children also creates huge barriers between the parent and the child. As your child grows older, you want him or her to feel as if the relationship with the parent is a trusted one. When you spank, the child can easily become distrustful and isolated, which means that later in their life, dealing with the big issues will be extremely challenging for them.

Counterproductive

Spanking children is counterproductive, promoting anxiety and fear, provoking anger, and destroying sensitivity and compassion for other people, as well as for him or herself. You want your child to grow up feeling confident and self-assured but spanking actually tears a child down.

Spousal Abuse

Interestingly, many studies can now link spanking children to spousal abuse. Although not intended as abuse, the child may have perceived it as such and the perception is reality. Unfortunately, these children grow up believing that when they become upset, it is okay to hit everyone else, often seeing as a hit to their husband or wife as "spanking", but in a twisted way.