Surgenor claims that teenagers in his jurisdiction are assaulting their parents at an unprecedented rate.  Unfortunately there is no way to independently verify his claim, since neither the UCR, the NCVS, nor the local Cuyahoga County data distinguish between juvenile violence against parents and the much more prevalent juvenile violence against siblings, or against any other family members.  All domestic violence by juveniles is lumped together in the UCR and Cuyahoga County data, regardless of the relationship between arrestee and victim.  The NCVS breaks down domestic violence by relationship type, but unfortunately does not distinguish between a child of 15 assaulting a 40 year old parent, and a "child" of 50 assaulting a 75 year old parent.  Surgenor cites his own case files as evidence of a specific rise in child assaults on parents, but provides his readers with no hard numbers at all, merely repeating throughout his book that child assaults on parents in his jurisdiction are "up 700%," (pp. 7, 45, and 200).  This is followed by the usual claim that nonspanked children cause "98.1%" of child-on-parent assaults on his beat.  Juvenile records are sealed, so no one will ever be able to examine and independently verify the actual raw data upon which Surgenor bases this claim.  We are required to just take Surgenor's word for it.

    The most unlikely statistic in Surgenor's book is the one which he repeats most often: that 98.1% of teenagers in his jurisdiction who commit domestic violence against their parents were never spanked as children.

"A statistic that alarms me more is that of those children charged with physically assaulting their mothers and fathers, only 1.9 percent were ever spanked by their parents.  This is more glaring evidence that the lack of corporal punishment is contributing to the increase in juvenile delinquency." (p. 7)

"In fact, of those juveniles arrested for committing assaults against their own parents, only 1.9 percent were spanked as they were growing up.  Are the modern-day psychologists correct in assuming that spanking a child makes them violent?  No.  The opposite is true." (p. 89)

"In my city, of the juveniles arrested for assaulting their parents, less than 2 percent were spanked as youngsters.  Yet psychologists continue to try and convince parents that spanking produces violent children." (p. 200)

    This dubious and unverifiable statistic is at the very core of his argument.  His "98.1% unspanked" figure is wildly at odds with all available published research on spanking and aggression.  Surgenor mentions Dr. Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire as the source of the figure of 10% as the percentage of American parents who never spank (p. 123).  If 98.1% of the child-on-parent domestic assaults were truly perpetrated by the 10% of children whose parents never spanked them, this would mean that an unspanked child was 465 times more likely to assault a parent than a spanked child.  If this extremely strong correlation truly existed, why hasn't anyone else besides Robert Surgenor noticed by now?  Violence in general and spanking in particular have been the subject of scientific scrutiny for years.  Thompson (in press) found that nearly all of the 88 studies on spanking over the past 40 years found it to be associated with worse rather than better behavior in children.  A brief and by no means exhaustive review of relevant research studies follows.

    Gunnoe & Mariner (1997) found that the more the children in their sample were spanked at the beginning of the study, the more their Antisocial Behavior Scores had increased when they were followed up years later.   Straus et al., (1997) replicated this result independently, and also reported that as a group, the children who were spanked the least or not at all showed an improvement in behavior over time.  These two studies were published side by side in a pediatrics journal, and influenced the American Association of Pediatrics to officially take a stand against all forms of spanking a few months later in April of 1998.  Kantor & Straus (1994) found significant correlations between corporal punishment in adolescence and a variety of negative long term effects, including elevated rates of domestic violence.  Maurer (1974) in a now-classic study of death row inmates at the San Quentin Prison, failed to find a single inmate who had not been physically punished as a child, typically in abusive ways.  If lack of physical punishment really turns children into violent criminals, logic suggests that they should be over-represented among the ranks of the most hardened felons, not under-represented.  If nonspanked children grow up to commit disproportionate amounts of serious crime, why aren't prisons full of them?  Maurer and Wallerstein (1987)  found that 95% of their sample of juvenile delinquents had been physically punished to a "severe" or "extreme" degree while 0% of these delinquents came from nonspanking homes.  The authors also quote Dr. Ralph Welsh, a psychologist who examined over 2,000 delinquent youths:

"The recidivist male delinquent who has never been exposed to the belt, extension cord or fist at some time in his life is virtually non-existent. As the severity of corporal punishment in the delinquent's developmental history increases, so does the probability that he will engage in a violent act."

    Not one published peer reviewed research study has ever produced evidence of any form of measurable long term benefit to children from spanking, despite efforts by prospankers in academia to do so.

    Why do Surgenor's numbers so drastically contradict all other available research?  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  As we shall now see, Surgenor's "evidence" in support of his extraordinary "98.1% nonspanked" claim fails to adhere even to the standards of ordinary scholarly data, and falls far short of extraordinary.

    At various points throughout his book, Surgenor asserts that parents widely believe that spanking their child is against the law, and think that any form of corporal punishment of a child puts the parent at risk of criminal prosecution:

"The problem is that parents today are not cognizant of the law and, therefore, are afraid of being charged with child abuse if they spank their child.  Nothing could be further from the truth."  (p. 66)

"I provided everyone involved in our conversation with proof that a parent can [legally] spank his or her child.  The court advocate indicated that she had been working with the courts for several years and was unaware that the law was worded as such.  Good grief!  It's no wonder parents are afraid to discipline their kids.  Social workers, advocates of abused children, and even law enforcement officers are often uninformed and ignorant of the law [permitting parents to legally spank their children]."  (p.71)

"One of the problems that we have in our society is the general public's ignorance of the law" [permitting parents to legally spank their children]."  (p. 76)

"Fortunately today, the law still protects parents who wish to use corporal punishment in the training of their children.  Most parents just don't realize it."  (p. 134)
 

    Parents whose child is in trouble with the law for hitting them may also deny having ever physically punished the child simply because they do not want to appear in any way blameworthy, even if these parents do recognize that spanking itself is not illegal.  Furthermore, any parents with an undiscovered history of physical abuse of their child have a self-interested motivation to deny all use of corporal punishment in their child's life, since any scrutiny in this area could lead to discovery of genuinely prosecutable behaviors by the parent.  Given the strong correlation between violent criminal behavior and abuse in childhood observed by Maurer (1974) and others, it is likely that a disproportionate number of juveniles who assault their parents had a history not only of physical punishment, but of abusive physical punishment.  Hence, a disproportionate number of the parents of these children would have reason to deny all use of corporal punishment when questioned by police, to steer police away from making incriminating discoveries about the parents' past behaviors.  These factors alone compromise Surgenor's entire data set and irrevocably taint any conclusions about the prevalence of spanking in the early lives of parent-assaulting juveniles in Surgenor's sample.  However, there is an even more troubling reason to doubt the validity of Surgenor's numbers.

    Further exacerbating the serious reportage problems just described, there is also the matter of Surgenor's eagerness to place juvenile parent-assault perpetrators among the 98.1% whom he claims were never physically punished by their parents, despite evidence to the contrary.  A example of Surgenor's zeal to classify a juvenile domestic violence perpetrator as "never physically punished" appears early in his book:

"Another trait that I have recognized in kids who have never been spanked is an uncontrollable anger and a hatred toward the parent who has reared them in such a manner.  This correlation became very obvious to me very early in my career.  Today's researchers  are attempting to convince us that a spanked child is an angry child.  My findings are the complete opposite!   [emphasis his]
   "One of the children I dealt with over the years began her final stage of defiance at the age of thirteen.  For the purposes of identification, we'll call her Barbara.  She was the offspring of a marriage that didn't work out and ended in divorce when the girl was two.  The mother remarried a year later to a soft-spoken man who attempted to introduce some structure and discipline into Barbara's life.  The mother, who did not feel that spanking was an option, prevented her husband from using that form of discipline.  The couple had another child, a son, when Barbara was five years old.  Dad soon found out that he was not allowed to use corporal punishment on his biological offspring either.  When Barbara began reaching the young teenage years, her parents began to notice the final stage of defiance.  The husband attempted to take control of the daughter by dishing out discipline when there were obvious acts of defiance.    It soon became apparent that the mother would not tolerate he husband even touching the children.  On three occasions, the mother reported the father to our department for child abuse.  Further investigation by our department and the department of social services determined that what the father was attempting to do was within the guidelines of the law.  The father reported that the children were refusing to follow any of the rules and were swearing at him and the mother, yet the mother was trying to protect them from any kind of physical discipline."  (p. 9)

    With unintended irony, Surgenor even recounts an anecdote about how he himself, in a manner of speaking, physically punished 13 year old Barbara in his office one day for getting out of her chair "in an aggressive manner."  He writes:

"I leaped out of my chair and grabbed her by the neck, lifting her up and into the wall behind her." (p. 10)

     One is struck by Surgenor's stubborn lack of interest in any alternative explanations for the unlawful behavior of troubled youngsters, aside from an alleged lack of fear born of an alleged "lack of physical punishment of any kind."  Barbara grew up through two divorces, and her current parents are so divided on the subject of how to discipline her that the police have been called on three occasions by her mother to file physical child abuse charges against her father.   As someone who works with numerous troubled youths, one wonders why Surgenor seems so oblivious to the possibility that this girl's disordered family situation and divorce-ridden early years might have something to do with her violent acting out behaviors as a teenager.

    The "98.1 percent" group of "never spanked" children obviously contains an unknown and unknowable number of subjects with a history of physical punishment in the home, whom no bonafide researcher would ever classify as "never spanked."   But Surgenor classifies them as such in an apparent pursuit of a useful, quotable statistic for his one-man pro-spanking crusade.   Surgenor had the option of presenting whichever case history best fit his thesis.  He chose Barbara's.  The fact that this case history is the best example he could find of a "never spanked" child arrested for violence against a parent discredits Surgenor's unreplicable  "98.1% never spanked" statistic and discredits Surgenor himself as a self-proclaimed "researcher."

    In the previous five pages, we have seen that Surgenor's argument for a juvenile crime wave cannot be supported by evidence, nor can his claim of a large scale abandonment of spanking by American parents.  His statistics based on his personal case files suffer from tainted data gathering conditions and a blatantly inaccurate classification of an unknown number of his violent juvenile subjects as "never spanked" despite a history of physical punishment in the home.  Hence, all of Surgenor's arguments, whether based on national crime statistics or on his own research, crumble under critical scrutiny.  All that remains of Surgenor's argument are unsupported assertions and scores of quotations from the Bible.

    For those seeking information and insights concerning spanking and its effects on children, "No Fear: A Police Officer's Perspective," is worse than useless.  It is a pastiche of half truths, unverifiable dubious claims, and outright errors.  This book contains no original contributions to human knowledge.  Readers are well advised to spend their book purchasing dollars on other volumes which do.
 

References

   Brezina, T. (1999). "Teenage violence toward parents as an adaptation to family strain:
   Evidence from a national survey of male adolescents." Youth & Society, 30(4), 416-444.

   Gunnoe, M.L. & Mariner, C.L.  1997.  "Toward a Developmental-Contextual
   Model of the effects of Parental Spanking on Children's Aggression."
   _Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine_ 151:768-775.

   Kantor, G.K. and Straus, M.A.  1994.  "Corporal Punishment of Adolescents
   By Parents: A Risk Factor in the Epidemiology of Depression, Suicide,
   Alcohol Abuse, Child Abuse, and Wife Beating."  _Adolescence_
   29(115):543-561.

    MacMillan, H.L.; Boyle, M.H.; Wong, M.Y.-Y; Duku, E.K.; Fleming, J.E.;
   Walsh, C.A.  (1999)  "Slapping and spanking in childhood and its association with
    lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorders in a general population sample."
    _Canadian Medical Association Journal_ 161(7):805-9.

   Maurer, A.  1974.  "Corporal Punishment."  _American Psychologist_
   29:614-626.

   Strassberg, Z.; Dodge, K.A.; Petit, G.S. & Bates, J.E.  1994.  "Spanking
   in the Home and Children's Subsequent Aggression Toward Kindergarten
   Peers." _Development and Psychopathology_, 6:445-461.

   Straus, M.A.  1991.  "Discipline and Deviance: Physical Punishment of
   Children and Violence and Other Crime in Adulthood."  _Social Problems_
   38(2):133-155

   Straus, M.A.  1994.  Beating The Devil Out Of Them: Corporal Punishment
   In American Families. New York, NY: Lexington Books.

    Straus, M.A. and Gelles, R.J  1990.  _Physical Violence In American
   Families: Risk Factors And Adaptations To Violence In 8,145 Families_.
   New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

   Straus, M.A. and Mouradian, V.E.  1998.  "Impulsive Corporal Punishment by
   Mothers and Antisocial Behavior and Impulsiveness of Children."
   _Behavioral Sciences & The Law_ 16(3):353-

   Straus, M.A.; Sugarman, D.B. and Giles-Sims, J.  1997.  "Corporal
   Punishment by Parents and Subsequent Anti-Social Behavior of Children"
   _Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine_ 151(8):761-767.

    Thompson, E. E. (in press). "The short- and long- term effects of corporal punishment
   on children: A meta-analytic review."  _Psychological Bulletin_.
 
 

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