Child Discipline and Physical Abuse in Immigrant Latino Families: Reducing Violence and Misunderstandings

Abstract

This article examines common areas of misunderstanding between professionals and low-income Latino families concerning issues of physical abuse. It argues that low-income immigrant children deserve the same protection from harsh physical punishment as all other children. This article suggests culturally competent ways for counselors to work with Latino families to eliminate all forms of violence toward children including corporal punishment. Finally, this article argues that the systemic stresses on low-income Latino immigrant families must be acknowledged and reduced when addressing child discipline and abuse.

Parenting in a New Land: Specialized Services for Immigrant and Refugee Families in the USA

“…Many families do not intentionally abuse or neglect their children. For example, corporal punishment in many families is accepted and Western parenting styles appear permissive (Fontes 2002;Lee et al 2001;Fontes 2005;Lincroft and Resner 2006). Furthermore, state involvement in the private sphere of the family, especially with regard to the discipline of children, is an unfamiliar concept to many immigrants and refugees.…”

Immigrant Children and Child Welfare in the United States: Demographics, Legislation, Research, Policy, and Practice Impacting Public Services

“…Tensions may occur as children experience conflict between parental expectations and the values of the majority culture that emphasize autonomy and independence (Fontes 2002;Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Increased parenting stress is common among immigrant parents, who feel they are no longer able to control their children.…”

Cultural and ecological contexts of violent punishment and restraint of Negev Bedouin children: from understandings to interventions

“…Modern social workers have also been attuned to an ecological understanding of the contexts from which maltreatment arises (Garbarino, 1985;Garbarino and Sherman, 1980;Korbin, 2002), and of corporal punishment in particular (Ripoll-Núñez and Rohner, 2006). These kinds of cultural and contextual awareness allow some guidance in navigation between the dangers of ethnocentric stances to 'abusive' behaviours on the one hand and culturally relativistic ones on the other (Fontes, 2002), or between an approach that ignores contextual constraint on the one hand and one that is too forgiving in its perspective on the other.…”

“…Furthermore, evaluation of the risk to which they are exposed occurs within two worlds: on the one hand, within their own communities, which remain substantially governed by traditional pastoral nomadic lifestyles and value systems, and on the other, within the modern social work and legal systems now charged with child welfare. Yet, such cases are not unheard of in developed countries, especially with immigrant communities (Blackstock et al, 2004;Fontes, 2002;Maker et al, 2005;Rhee et al, 2008;Zayas, 1992), and analogous dilemmas face social workers in traditional societies around the world. Even within middle-class American experience, there is still debate about the boundaries of acceptable uses of violence as a form of punishment in the heated debates about spanking as 'non-abusive physical punishment' (see Graziano et al, 1996, and other comments in this issue of the journal Pediatrics, reporting on a 1996 conference in the wake of the lack of consensus on a policy statement on corporal punishment to be issued by the Board of the American Academy of Pediatrics).…”