If you believe spanking could help your child become well behaved or less naughty, then you are wrong. People usually indulge in spanking when they want to punish their children for misconduct.

Spanking is an act of slapping children on their buttocks as a punishment for them. A study found that spanking does not work rather it makes children more aggressive whereby they indulge into more anti social activities later in their lives.

A team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan had studied results of open hand spanking on children’s behavior. They wanted to find if the practice of spanking really works. What they found was that it has many negative consequences. To arrive to the results, they did a meta-analysis and analyzed several studies conducted on spanking. They reported their findings in the Journal of Family Psychology.

The team reported 17 undesirable outcomes of spanking. The children defy their parents immediately after spanking. And in long run, they adopt many ill practices, such as alcohol abuse in adulthood. The team found that more a child is spanked higher the risk of such outcomes. It also stated that spanking can damage IQ of a child and that spanking also causes aggressiveness and worsens behavior in them.

"The upshot of the study is that spanking increases the likelihood of a wide variety of undesired outcomes for children. Spanking thus does the opposite of what parents usually want it to do", said Andrew Grogan-Kaylor of the University Of Michigan School Of Social Work.

It is believed that a child, who is often spanked, grows up with mental health problems which could be responsible for its anti social behavior later.

"While kids may not immediately defy their parents after a spanking, they're more likely to be aggressive later, to have a worse relationship with their parents, and to grow up to have alcohol and substance abuse problems, the new study shows," according to a news report published by Kens5.

"In childhood, parental use of spanking was associated with low moral internalization, aggression, antisocial behavior, externalizing behavior problems, internalizing behavior problems, mental health problems, negative parent- child relationships, impaired cognitive ability, low self-esteem, and risk of physical abuse from parents. In adulthood, prior experiences of parental use of spanking were significantly associated with adult antisocial behavior, adult mental health problems, and with positive attitudes about spanking," they wrote.

According to a report in WTVM by Kathleen Doheny, "Spare the rod and spoil the child? Not so fast, suggests a new review that found spanking doesn't produce better behavior and may set up a child for psychological and learning problems later."

"Spanking is not achieving parents' goals," said lead researcher Elizabeth Gershoff, a developmental psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. "Children have more mental health problems the more they are spanked. They have lower cognitive ability, scoring lower on achievement tests."

A report published in Chicago Tribune informed, "A new study on spanking, considered the most complete analysis to date on the topic, finds the more children are spanked, the more likely they are to defy their parents, exhibit anti-social behaviors and experience mental health and cognitive problems."

"Spanking makes children's behavior worse," lead author Elizabeth T. Gershoff told me. "It has the opposite effect than what parents want: It doesn't make children better-behaved, and it doesn't teach children right from wrong. It's not related to immediate compliance, and it doesn't make children behave better in the future."