A study in New Orleans reveals that children whose parents had hit them frequently when they were 3 years old were 50 percent more likely to be aggressive at the age of 5 than those who had not been punished that way.
Dr. Catherine Taylor of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and director of the study commented on the following:
When parents use disciplinary measures, they try to teach their children a lesson and help them learn to behave well in the short and long term. But hitting the children will not generate immediate compliance and produces more damage than long-term benefits.
To carry out the study, they took into account the initial childhood tendency towards aggressive behavior (that children were already aggressive at 3 years, probably from previous learning), negative parenting factors such as violence between parents and depression or stress on them .
Even taking all these factors into account, hit the children at 3 years old remained predictive of an increased risk at 5 years old.
It makes sense if we think about the mechanism of absorption of children's knowledge. We all know the saying that "children are like sponges" that everything they see and everything they hear, they learn, that is, children do what they see. If they hit them, they hit.
PS: Hitting is a crime.
