Short-Term Solutions, Long-Term Problems

With four rambunctious boys ages 4 to 12, single mother Jennifer Gallagher often finds herself yelling her throat raw. "You feel like if you just talk to them, they don't hear you," says Gallagher, who lives in northeastern Pennsylvania.

So she yells when the boys fight, yells when they don't do their homework, yells when she has to tell them something five times. By the sixth time, the request comes out louder than an opera singer's aria. "Sometimes I yell so much, I worry that they're waiting for me to yell before they'll even move, they're so used to it."

Gallagher hates that she yells so much, and feels pretty bad once she calms down, but what she does is no different from what thousands of other parents do every day. Today, there's an entire generation of parents who grew up in an era of school paddlings, trips to the woodshed, and learning to flinch any time Dad removed his belt.

This generation has sworn they wouldn't hit their kids. The problem is, the same anger and frustration that fueled the old model of corporal punishment didn't magically vanish merely because a generation of well-meaning parents wanted it to. Instead of letting anger lead to hitting, it now often leads to shouting. But that simple act of raising our voice, depending on what we say and how often we do it, can hold the potential for long-term harm, says Murray A. Straus, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire.

According to a 2003 study by Straus published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, 74 percent of parents surveyed reported yelling or screaming at their kids. And not just once or twice. Most yelled or screamed at their children at least 25 times during the past year. That number might be higher, says Straus, because this study relied on parents to report their own behavior, which they probably weren't proud of or might occur so often that it was forgotten or taken for granted.

To be sure, raised voices are a normal part of many households. Yelling for a child who is outdoors or three rooms away probably isn't going to cause any lasting damage. Shouting at a child who is about to do something dangerous may be startling, but it's not intended to be harmful -- just the opposite. And if a family is naturally loud and gregarious, shouting may almost be the norm.

But when a parent is face to face with a child and shouting at her in clear anger or frustration, then experts like Straus worry about the impact such an instance of psychological aggression can have. In those moments, some parents can lose control and while they may not strike out physically, the words they throw at the child -- especially if those words include insults or threats -- can cause lasting harm.