Does Maternal Spanking Lead to Bullying Behaviors at School? A Longitudinal Study

Spanking as a form of punishment continues to be a highly prevalent form of discipline employed by parents in the U.S. to encourage compliance from children. Recent research continues to support that spanking does not lead to positive outcomes for children, and can be potentially detrimental in several different development facets. Bullying and the negative consequences for children and society has recently been an especially popular topic in the literature. Although much has been written and explored about implications of spanking, very few research studies have investigated the link of parental spanking on bullying behavior in young children. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of spanking and the likelihood of bullying behaviors in early childhood. Data for this study were used from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, consisting of 1020 mothers with young children was used collected at 4 different time points (Year 1, Year 3, Year 5, and Year 9). By utilizing structural equation modeling, we developed an autoregressive cross-lagged panel model to longitudinally test the connection between maternal spanking and childhood bullying. Our results indicated that spanking at age 1 positively predicted childhood bullying at age 3 for male children and negatively predicted bullying for females. Numerous autoregressive paths were statistically significant, indicating that maternal spanking at younger ages predicted spanking as the child aged. To gain further understanding our results were separated by the gender of the child. The results of the study have important implications for researchers, educators, and clinicians.