Background. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a global perspective on corporal punishment by examining differences between mothers' and fathers' use of corporal punishment with daughters and sons in nine countries. Methods. Interviews were conducted with 1398 mothers, 1146 fathers, and 1417 children (age range = 7 to 10 years) in China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States. Results. Across the entire sample, 54% of girls and 58% of boys had experienced mild corporal punishment, and 13% of girls and 14% of boys had experienced severe corporal punishment by their parents or someone in their household in the last month. Seventeen percent of parents believed that the use of corporal punishment was necessary to rear the target child. Overall, boys were more frequently punished corporally than were girls, and mothers used corporal punishment more frequently than did fathers. There were significant differences across countries, with reports of corporal punishment use lowest in Sweden and highest in Kenya. Conclusion. This work establishes that the use of corporal punishment is widespread, and efforts to prevent corporal punishment from escalating into physical abuse should be commensurately widespread.
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented families around the world with extraordinary challenges related to physical and mental health, economic security, social support, and education. The current study capitalizes on a longitudinal, cross-national study of parenting, adolescent development, and young adult competence to document the association between personal disruption during the pandemic and reported changes in internalizing and externalizing behavior in young adults and their mothers since the pandemic began. It further investigates whether family functioning during adolescence 3 years earlier moderates this association. Data from 484 families in five countries (Italy, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States) reveal that higher levels of reported disruption during the pandemic are related to reported increases in internalizing and externalizing behaviors after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic for young adults (M age = 20) and their mothers in all five countries, with the exception of one association in Thailand. Associations between disruption during the pandemic and young adults' and their mothers' reported increases in internalizing and externalizing behaviors were attenuated by higher levels of youth disclosure, more supportive parenting, and lower levels of destructive adolescentparent conflict prior to the pandemic. This work has implications for fostering parent-child relationships Editor's Note. Loes Keijers served as the action editor for this article.-EFD
Exposure to neighborhood danger during childhood has negative effects
that permeate multiple dimensions of childhood. The current study examined
whether mothers’, fathers’, and children's perceptions of
neighborhood danger are related to child aggression, whether parental monitoring
moderates this relation, and whether harsh parenting mediates this relation.
Interviews were conducted with a sample of 1,293 children (age
M = 10.68, SD = .66; 51% girls) and their
mothers (n = 1,282) and fathers (n = 1,075) in
nine countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden,
Thailand, and the United States). Perceptions of greater neighborhood danger
were associated with more child aggression in all nine countries according to
mothers’ and fathers’ reports and in five of the nine countries
according to children's reports. Parental monitoring did not moderate the
relation between perception of neighborhood danger and child aggression. The
mediating role of harsh parenting was inconsistent across countries and
reporters. Implications for further research are discussed, and include
examination of more specific aspects of parental monitoring as well as more
objective measures of neighborhood danger.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.