Spanking is the discipline style most associated with the Boomer generation, treated by many who grew up with it as simply how parenting was done at the time, effective, normal, and rarely questioned. Two studies looking directly at this practice, one tracking how common it’s become over time and one tracking what it actually does to kids, offer a clearer, evidence-based picture of both its decline and its real effects.
The clearest evidence on how the practice has changed over time comes from a 2021 study by Christopher Mehus and Megan Patrick, published in JAMA Pediatrics. The researchers used the long-running Monitoring the Future panel, tracking 25 consecutive cohorts of American high school seniors from 1976 to 2000, then following up with those same people at age 35, once they had become parents themselves. The analytic sample included 16,390 parents of children ages 2 to 12. Overall reported spanking prevalence fell from 50 percent in 1993 to 35 percent in 2017, a statistically significant decline. Among parents of the youngest children in the sample, ages 2 to 4, the drop was even sharper, from 60 percent down to 39 percent. The decline showed up in both mothers and fathers, and because the same cohorts were tracked repeatedly over decades rather than compared across different one-off samples, the study offers unusually solid evidence that this represents a genuine generational shift, not just a quirk of survey timing.
A second study helps explain part of why that shift happened, by directly examining what spanking actually does to children who experience it. In a 2016 meta-analysis by Elizabeth Gershoff and Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, the researchers statistically pooled 111 independent effect sizes drawn from studies covering a combined 160,927 children. Thirteen of seventeen separate outcomes showed statistically significant associations between spanking and detrimental results, including increased aggression, antisocial behavior, and mental health problems. Perhaps most strikingly, the effect sizes linking spanking to these negative outcomes did not differ significantly from the effect sizes found for outright physical abuse. The researchers also found evidence of generational transmission: adults who had been spanked more as children showed more antisocial behavior and mental health problems themselves, and were more likely to approve of spanking their own kids, helping explain how the practice persisted across generations even as evidence against it accumulated.
Together, these two studies suggest that the discipline style associated with Boomer-era parenting has been retreating for a real, evidence-based reason, not simply changing fashion. Mehus and Patrick’s research documents the actual scale of that retreat, tracked consistently across the same people over decades rather than inferred indirectly. Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor’s research helps explain why that retreat has continued, showing that the practice’s effects on children are not just mild or debatable, they statistically resemble the effects of physical abuse rather than a milder, more acceptable category of discipline. Between the two, the generational decline in spanking looks less like a cultural trend and more like a slow, data-driven correction.
It’s worth being honest about what these two studies don’t establish. Mehus and Patrick’s research measured self-reported spanking behavior, which can be subject to underreporting given shifting social norms around admitting to the practice, so the true decline could be somewhat different from what surveys captured. Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor’s meta-analysis is built from correlational studies, and while the consistency across 111 effect sizes and over 160,000 children is a real strength, it can’t fully rule out that families already dealing with more conflict or behavioral difficulty were also more likely to use spanking in the first place, alongside spanking itself contributing to those outcomes.
Within those honest limits, the research offers a genuinely clear picture of why this particular Boomer-era discipline style has been fading. It isn’t that today’s parents simply prefer a gentler approach for its own sake. The evidence on what spanking actually does to children has accumulated to the point where the practice’s effects look less like ordinary discipline and more like something closer to what researchers already understood to be harmful.