The debate over spanking goes back many years, but the essential question often evades discussion: does spanking actually work? In the short term, yes. You can correct immediate misbehavior with a slap or two on the rear-end or hand. But what about the long-term impact? Can spanking lead to permanent, hidden scars on children years later?
在教育小孩的问题上，关于要不要打板子的争论由来已久。但是人们往往回避了这样一个本质问题：打屁股有用吗？——从短期来看，是有效果，打手心、打屁股可以立即纠正孩子的错误行为。但是考虑到对孩子长远的影响呢？打板子会不会在孩子内心的深处形成长大以后都抹不去的伤痕呢？
On Friday, a sociologist from the University of New Hampshire, Murray Straus, presented a paper at the International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma, in San Diego, suggesting that corporal punishment does leave a long-lasting mark — in the form of lower IQ. Straus, who is 83 and has been studying corporal punishment since 1969, found that kids who were physically punished had up to a five-point lower IQ score than kids who weren't — the more children were spanked, the lower their IQ — and that the effect could be seen not only in individual children, but across entire nations. Among 32 countries Straus studied, in those where spanking was accepted, the average IQ of the survey population was lower than in nations where spanking was rare, the researcher says.
上周五在圣地亚哥举行的主题为“暴力，虐待与创伤”的国际会议上，来自于新罕布什尔州立大学的社会学家默里? 斯特劳斯发表了一篇论文，他指出，体罚确实对孩子造成了长远的影响，其后果是智商的降低。现已83岁高龄的斯特劳斯，从1969年起就开始研究体罚的问题。他发现受过体罚的小孩和没有受过体罚的小孩相比，IQ值（智商得分）要低5个点之多。受体罚越多，IQ值越低。不仅对某个孩子来说是这样，对整个国家来说也是这样。斯特劳斯说，在他研究的32个国家里面，那些普遍认可体罚行为的国家，人们的IQ值要低于那些极少存在体罚行为的国家。
In the U.S., Straus and his colleague Mallie Paschall of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, looked at 1,510 children — 806 kids ages 2 to 4, and 704 ages 5 to 9 — and found that roughly three-quarters had endured some kind of corporal punishment in the previous two weeks, according to interviews with the mothers. Researchers measured the children's IQ initially, then again four years later. Those kids who hadn't been spanked in the initial survey period scored significantly better on intelligence and achievement tests than those who had been hit. Among the 2-to-4-year-olds, the difference in IQ was five points; among the older kids, there was a 2.8-point gap. That association held after taking into account parental education, income and other environmental factors, says Straus.
在美国，斯特劳斯和他在太平洋研究所的同事迈里·帕什尔一起做过一个项目。这位同事是专职于调查与评估的。他们以1510个小孩为观察对象，其中806个2到4岁；704个5到9岁。当时，他们通过对孩子的家长的采访了解到，四分之三的孩子在2个星期内被体罚过。他们先对孩子们的智商进行了测试，然后4年以后进行回访。发现，在当时调查期间没有受到体罚的孩子，在智力测验和成就测验上的得分均高于受过体罚的孩子。其中2到4岁这一批里面，得分的差距是5分，而5到9岁的一批里面，差距是2.8分。斯特劳斯说，他们在挑选受访人群时，是考虑了各家庭的亲子教育，收入状况和其他因素都不相同这一先设条件的。
So how might getting spanked on the butt actually affect the workings of the brain? Straus notes that being spanked or hit is associated with fright and stress; kids who experience that kind of trauma have a harder time focusing and learning. In another recent paper that he coauthored with Paschall, Straus writes that previous research has found that even after you control for parental education and occupation, children of parents who use corporal punishment are less likely than other kids to graduate from college.
那么为何打的是屁股，伤的是脑袋呢？斯特劳斯发现，体罚会使小孩受惊吓、有压力。有过这种创伤的小孩很难集中注意力和有效地学习。在他与帕士奇合著、最近发表的另一篇论文中，他提到，即使在孩子们的家庭教育情况、父母的职业都接近的情况下，相对来说，那些受过体罚的小孩顺利完成大学学业也要困难一些。
Still, it's not clear if spanking causes lower cognitive ability or if lower cognitive ability might somehow lead to more spanking. It's quite possible that kids with poor reasoning skills misbehave more often and therefore elicit harsher punishment. "It could be that lower IQ causes parents to get exasperated and hit more," Straus says, although he notes that a recent Duke University study of low-income families found that toddlers' low mental ability did not predict an increase in spanking. (The study did find, however, that kids who were spanked at age 1 displayed more aggressive behavior by age 2, and scored lower on cognitive development tests by age 3.) "I believe the relationship [between corporal punishment and IQ] is probably bidirectional," says Straus. "There has to be something the kid is doing that's wrong that leads to corporal punishment. The problem is, when the parent does that, it seems to have counterproductive results to cognitive ability in the long term."
但是有一点必须考虑到。我们无法确认是受到体罚造成了智力低下，还是正因智力低下而导致孩子容易受到体罚。有些小孩脑袋没那么灵光，他们可能经常做错事而被罚。斯特劳斯也是承认这一点的。他说，智力低的小孩，确实容易引起父母发火，所以挨的板子要多一些。但是杜克大学最近对低收入家庭作了一项研究，发现还在蹒跚学步的儿童，是不会因为智力方面的原因而受到惩罚的。（同时，他们偏偏又发现，那些1岁时被打过的小孩，2岁时会有打别人的举动，3岁时智力偏低。） “小孩受体罚和小孩智力变低，这两者之间我认为是一种恶性循环。”斯特劳斯说， “小孩做错事，父母体罚他，从长远来看，会对孩子的认知能力造成负面的影响，而这与家长体罚的初衷是相反的。”
One problem with Straus' data is that some of the parents who tended to spank may also have been engaging in actual physical abuse of their children. Researchers define corporal punishment as physical force intended to cause pain — but not injury — for the purpose of correcting a child's behavior, not simply hurting him. Studies have shown that very few parents who use corporal punishment also beat their kids, but Straus can't rule out the possibility that his data is confounded by the presence of child abuse, which past research has shown to affect victims' development.
斯特劳斯的数据也是有漏洞的：有些家长在体罚孩子的时候，对孩子身体的身体造成了确确实实的伤害。而斯特劳斯他们对“体罚”的定义为：对孩子肉体的一种惩罚——在程度上，只产生疼痛，不造成伤害；在出发点上，是为修正孩子的行为，而不是为了惩罚而惩罚。虽然只有极少数家长在体罚时会痛打孩子，这是有研究证明的，但是斯特劳斯无法排除这样一种可能性：他所说的体罚，其实包含了孩子肉体受到伤害这一类情况。而肉体受到伤害的情况，过去就已有结论，这是会影响孩子各方面的发育的。
The preponderance of evidence points away from corporal punishment, which the European Union and the United Nations have recommended against, but the data suggest that most parents, especially those in the U.S., still spank their kids. Based on his international data, collected by surveying more than 17,000 college students in various countries, Straus found that countries with higher GDP tended to be those where corporal punishment was used less often. In the U.S., the tendency to hit also varies with income, along with geography and culture; it's most common among African-American families, Southern families, parents who were spanked as children themselves and those who identify themselves as conservative Christians.
欧盟与联合国方面从另一个角度提出，这些证据除了可证明体罚会有何种后果之外，更为有力地反映出的是现今的某些问题：多数家长，尤其是美国的父母，对体罚他们的小孩仍是理直气壮。从斯特劳斯在世界各国家得到的 17000名学生的调查结果里面，亦发现一个国家的GDP越高，这里的家长越少体罚孩子。在美国，体罚现象跟家庭的收入状况、地理和文化因素有关。在亚裔家庭、南部家庭里面更为常见。如果家长小时侯也被体罚过，或者家长自认为是保守的基督教徒，也更可能体罚孩子。
But overall the percentage of parents who spank has been steadily declining. Straus says that in 1968, 94% of Americans told surveyors they agreed with spanking. By 2005, the proportion who said it is "sometimes O.K. to spank a child" had fallen to 72%, although most researchers believe the actual incidence of corporal punishment is higher.
不过总的来说，体罚小孩的家长还是越来越少了。斯特劳斯说，1968年的时候，有94%的美国人认可体罚。到2005年，同意“有时候体罚孩子是可以的”的人占的比例下降到72%，虽然有些研究者认为实际上体罚事件发生的更频繁了。
The practice has its defenders, and Straus himself admits, with chagrin in his voice, that he spanked his own son. In the 1990s, the American Academy of Pediatrics underwent a bitter fight before finally declaring in 1998 that "corporal punishment is of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects."
连斯特劳斯自己都懊恼地承认，他有时候会打孩子屁股。当然,也会有人为体罚辩护。90年代的时候，美国儿科学会做了许多艰苦的工作，才得以在1998年公开宣布“体罚对孩子没有多少正面作用，且可能造成潜在的负面影响”
Sometimes spanking seems like the only way to get through to an unruly toddler. But the price for fixing his poor short-term conduct might be an even more troublesome outcome in the future.
有时候人们会觉得，如果孩子调皮捣蛋，那不打不行。但是，这种对孩子行为的暂时的修正，却有可能会给他的将来造成更大的麻烦。
