Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. The strong and ever-growing evidence base demonstrating that physical punishment places children at risk for a range of negative outcomes, coupled with global recognition of children's inherent rights to protection and dignity, has led to the emergence of programs specifically designed to prevent physical punishment by parents. This paper describes promising programs and strategies designed for each of three levels of intervention - indicated, selective, and universal β and summarizes the existing evidence base of each.
Areas for further program development and evaluation are identified. Several decades of research on parents' use of physical punishment have yielded two firm conclusions. To date, 51 countries have legally prohibited all physical punishment of children Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, Countries that maintain legal distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable physical punishment are coming under increasing international pressure to uphold children's human rights to protection and to dignity, as such distinctions condone some arbitrary level of violence against children.
The strength of the evidence demonstrating physical punishment's risks and the human rights arguments against it have led increasing numbers of professional organizations serving children and families to strongly discourage physical punishment. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics Pediatrics and the Canadian Paediatric Society have each called upon pediatricians to advise parents against physical punishment. The U. Yet parents continue to physically punish their children.
Similar rates have been found in Canada. The fact that parents continue to use physical punishment, despite the accumulation of scientific evidence that it is both ineffective and harmful to children, indicates a clear need for strategies to prevent it. There is a particular need for interventions that translate evidence of its harms into parent-friendly messages and that support parents in changing their behavior in ways that promote their children's healthy development.
To date, a variety of approaches has been used to prevent physical punishment, but there have been very few efforts to identify and synthesize these approaches. Indeed, a recent, purportedly comprehensive, review of parenting interventions by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine neglected to include interventions aimed at reducing physical punishment. Therefore, professionals do not have a clear picture of the approaches available or of their levels of success.
