According to 1998 statistics, there were 861,602 victims of child abuse, neglect and maltreatment in the United States.  While this represents an increase of almost 171,000 victims vis-à-vis 1990 statistics, it is a decrease of almost 94,000 cases of substantiated maltreatment from 1996. The statistics represent substantiated incidents of maltreatment, including the neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional maltreatment, or medical neglect of children from birth to age eighteen.

(Source: U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, Child Maltreatment 1998: Reports From the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect System, April 2000 in U. S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2000 [120th edition] Washington, DC, 1999, p. 219.)

"Beating with a rod is not acceptable to modern psychologists who think they know better than God.  These false teachers view spanking as a form of violence, of child abuse.  Well, it is indeed a mild, restrained use of force and pain (not violence); but it is not child abuse….  The aim is pain which results in a change of heart and of actions. ‘Child abuse’ would be defined from the biblical perspective as a failure to use the rod.”

(Source: Mary Chambers, “The Loving Art of Spanking, Patriarch, Issue 33 [April 2000], p. 9-11, from Motherhood is Stranger than Fiction, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995.)

Conservative Protestant parents have been much-maligned in both the academy and the popular culture—both for their religious beliefs and their child –rearing and –discipline techniques: “…scholarship and popular commentary that has depicted conservative Protestant child discipline as an authoritarian form of parenting consisting of harsh punishment, arbitrary assertions of power, and otherwise unresponsive child-rearing practices.”  In this new study, John P. Bartowski, of Mississippi State University, and W. Bradford Wilcox, of Princeton University, take a hard look at such critiques, raising some questions of their own about the detractors’ contentions.

Sociologists and child-development specialists have found that the incidence of parental yelling at children “is a key dimension of child discipline worthy of scholarly attention,” and that this yelling has “a negative, independent effect on child well-being.”  Indeed, frequent yelling is reported to be a factor in increased rates of antisocial behavior, lower self-esteem, and other psychiatric maladies.  Therefore, assert the authors, “If such portrayals of an authoritarian parenting style are indeed accurate, then the frequent use of corporal punishment among conservative Protestant parents should be accompanied by high relative rates of parental yelling and verbal intimidation.”

What the researchers found, however, was “…that conservative protestant caregivers are significantly more likely than other parents to display positive, nurturant emotions toward their children.  Therefore, many of the same conservative Protestant parents who are more inclined to spank their children are also more likely to express love and affection toward them.”  In fact, in their review of the conservative Protestant literature, the researchers discovered that many conservative experts view yelling as entirely inappropriate, “a dangerous first step on the slippery slope to physical child abuse.”

Indeed, Bartowski and Wilcox found that theologically conservative parents are less likely than their nonconservative Protestant counterparts to yell at their preschool children (p < .10) and school-age children (p < .05).  Theological conservatism was further correlated to less “verbal reproof “ (yelling) at preschool children (p < .001) by their parents.

The authors conclude: “Our study, combined with recent work that reveals that conservative Protestants are more likely than other parents to praise and hug their children, leads us to wonder if the unique cultural context of conservative Protestant parenting may mitigate some of the adverse outcomes typically associated with corporal punishment.”

(Source: Bartowski, John P. and W. Bradford Wilcox, “Conservative Child Discipline: The Case of Parental Yelling,” Social Forces, Vol. 79, No. 1 [September 2000]: 265-290.)