A new research has revealed that spanking can do more harm than good. A study which examined hundreds of U. S. children showed that the more the child was spanked the lower his or her IQ became compared to others.

All parents want intelligent children. Study researcher Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire said, "This research shows that avoiding spanking and correcting misbehavior in other ways can help that happen".

One more condition which might be considered important in deciding the smartness of a child is the socio-economic background of the child. Straus said that he took all angles into consideration during the study and found that other factors like the background do create a small casual link.

He says that it can’t be out rightly proved but a lot of other alternatives are ruled out and it s evident that spanking causes a slowdown in a child’s development of mental abilities.

The study involved a research on two age groups of children. 806 children of ages 2-4 and 704 children of ages 5-9 were tested for IQ in the beginning. The first group was then spanked for four years while the other was not.

Both the groups of kids became smarter after four years but the first group with children between the ages 2-4, who were spanked scored 2.8 points lower than the children in the other group.

The results were significantly different and even after taking factors like parenting, education, income, cognitive stimulation by parents and other factors into consideration, the children’s mental abilities could be affected.

He will present these results along with the research on the relationship between average national IQ and the ongoing spanking around the world.