Does Harsh Parenting Really Change Your Child's Brain?

Reviewing the actual research behind these guilt-inducing headlines

Source: Anna Shvets/Pexels

It seems that every month there is a headline aimed at making parents feel like they are irreparably damaging their children. The guilt-inducing headline of this month claims that harsh parenting will change your child’s brain. Some of the headlines I saw included: Warm vs Harsh Parenting Alters Shape of Children's Brains, Study Finds and Study Finds Harsh Parenting During “Sensitive Periods” Can Affect Kids’ Brain Development.

These headlines felt like déjà vu and then I remembered similar headlines popping up a few years ago, including: Harsh parenting may stunt children's brain growth, study suggests and Frequently yelling at your children may wind up shrinking their brains, scientist warns.

When you see headlines like this, it is hard not to wonder whether the one time that you weren’t the most gentle parent somehow irreversibly altered your child’s brain. So does harsh parenting actually harm brain development? And how do we know if we are parenting harshly?

Let’s Dive Into the Actual Research…

The most recent study mentioned above on harsh parenting followed 173 children from age 3 to 21 and looked at how harsh parenting (and when it occurred) impacted brain structure. Parents reported on their own parenting style when the children were 3, 5, and 9 years. Brain scans occurred when the children were 15 years and depression and anxiety symptoms were reported at age 21.

They found that harsh parenting at age 3 was associated with widespread brain differences while harsh parenting at age 9 was associated with more specific differences in networks in the brain related to emotional processing. The authors interpreted these findings to suggest that harsh parenting earlier in childhood may have a greater impact on brain development.

In this study, harsh parenting was defined as psychological aggression, which includes very extreme reactions such as swearing at your child, threatening to spank them, or calling them “dumb” or “lazy” or another similar insulting term. The questionnaire did include one item on yelling at your child but did not specify how intense the yelling was (for example, yelling “get in the car” versus yelling in a shaming or belittling way).

So what about the study claiming that harsh parenting “shrunk” kids’ brains? This study included 94 children and used brain scans to look at the structure of brain regions in children who had experienced high levels of harsh parenting versus children who had experienced low levels of harsh parenting. They found that children who had experienced high levels of harsh parenting showed smaller amygdala and prefrontal regions (both of these regions are involved in processing emotions). The researchers also found an interaction with anxiety symptoms, suggesting that children with and without anxiety may respond differently to harsh parenting.

Harsh parenting in this study was measured by a questionnaire that included how often parents spank their child, scold/yell/raise your voice at their child, use physical punishment, and get angry at their child.

Overall Translation

Both of these studies found associations between harsh parenting and brain regions involved in processing emotions. However, these studies have very important limitations, such as relatively small sample sizes and being correlational studies (meaning they only found an association between harsh parenting and brain differences and we don’t have evidence that harsh parenting actually causes these brain differences). Further research is needed in order to really understand the meaning of these brain differences.

However, these are my main takeaways from these two studies and their accompanying headlines:

1. Parenting and early childhood are important but it’s never too late to make positive changes: These studies along with hundreds of other studies suggest that the decisions we make as parents, particularly in early childhood, likely do matter. However, this does not mean that it is “too late” to change course and improve your parenting. Research finds that parenting interventions improve parenting skills and child outcomes even up until the teenage years.

2. Your parenting might be less “harsh” than you think: Harsh parenting (as defined in these research studies) is actually pretty extreme. Harsh parenting in these studies is not simply occasionally yelling at your children or failing to “gentle parent” (check out this newsletter on gentle parenting if you haven’t already). Harsh parenting in these studies included spanking and physical punishment, insulting, shaming, and threatening your child. It also has to be a consistent pattern, not something that only happens occasionally. Of course, we should all try to avoid harsh parenting as much as possible, but it’s also important to remember that yelling at your child on rare occasions has not been linked to brain differences.

3. Be cautious of neuroscience findings in the media: You will often see headlines related to neuroscience findings in the media because research finds that people are more likely to believe scientific findings when they have a neuroscience explanation and journalists may be capitalizing on this bias. This is why a headline claiming that harsh parenting changes your child’s brain is more striking than a headline claiming that harsh parenting changes your child’s behavior. It’s important to know that a brain difference doesn’t necessarily mean a deficit— a brain difference could mean a deficit, a strength, or nothing at all. We don’t understand enough about the brain to really know what these differences mean.

4. Focus on what you are doing right not what you are doing wrong: The more recent study described above found that warm and nurturing parenting during middle childhood was associated with brain differences in areas related to emotional processing and was associated with lower levels of anxiety and depression in adulthood (harsh parenting was actually not associated with adult levels of anxiety and depression in this study). Of course there are other studies that find that harsh parenting is linked to negative outcomes but this finding (along with previous research) suggests that what you do right matters too. Rather than beating yourself up for the time you lost your cool and were a harsh parent, it can be easier to focus on increasing the love and warmth you show your child.

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Welcome to the Parenting Translator newsletter! I am Dr. Cara Goodwin, a licensed psychologist with a PhD in child psychology and mother to four children (currently a 1-year-old, 4-year-old, 6-year-old, and 9-year-old). I specialize in taking all of the research that is out there related to parenting and child development and turning it into information that is accurate, relevant, and useful for parents! I recently turned these efforts into a non-profit organization since I believe that all parents deserve access to unbiased and free information. This means that I am only here to help YOU as a parent so please send along any feedback, topic suggestions, or questions that you have! You can also find me on Instagram @parentingtranslator, on TikTok @parentingtranslator, and my website (www.parentingtranslator.com).

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