Differences in Parents’ Attitudes Toward Spanking Across Socioeconomic Status and Region, 1986–2016

This paper explores whether and how parents’ attitudes toward the spanking of children have changed over the last 30 years, a period when parents’ use of corporal punishment declined precipitously in the U.S. We compare these trends across parents’ socioeconomic status (SES) and region of the country to identify whether shifts in attitudes toward these practices parallel documented shifts in their use by SES and region. We draw data from the General Social Surveys (GSS) from 1986 through 2016, which asked respondents how much they agree children sometimes need “a good, hard spanking.” We compare responses among parents at the 80th (high-SES) and 20th (low-SES) percentiles of the income and education distributions, and between parents in southern versus non-southern states, controlling for child and parent age and parent gender. In non-southern regions, parents’ support for corporal punishment declined over time, especially among high-SES parents, whereas in the South parents’ support for corporal punishment remained stably high over time across the socioeconomic distribution. These findings imply a distinct cultural perspective on corporal punishment in the South, one that may help explain the disproportionate maintenance of the practice in schools and provide a potent target for policy and program interventions to reduce its use.