Parental Use of Physical Force in Child Discipline

Abstract

Surveys of parents have revealed the common use of physical punishment in disciplining children. In this study, responses of young, unmarried adults about their own personal experiences in having been spanked were obtained from 679 college freshmen. These respondents indicated (a) that being physically punished was a common childhood experience, with 93.2% of the respondents having been spanked as children; (b) that these young adults are now very accepting of the use of spanking by parents and they fully intend to carry on the spanking tradition with their own (future) children; and (c) that those who were not spanked as children are now significantly less accepting of the practice than those who were spanked. Other findings, such as the ages at which spankings occurred, their severity, injuries, the involvement of anger of parents and resentment of children, and the importance of studying common or “subabusive” violence against children are discussed.

Measuring Intermediary Determinants of Early Childhood Health: A Composite Index Comparing Colombian Departments

“…Physical punishment, despite being a practice socially acceptable as a way to discipline children in many countries (Deater-Deckard et al 2003;Gershoff 2002;Graziano and Namaste 1990), can be a stressful life event that may affect the child's health. In this category we included whether the mother physically punished children with spanking, pushing, depriving them of food, hitting with objects, giving them inappropriate work to do or throwing water at them.…”

Ethnic differences in the link between physical discipline and later adolescent externalizing behaviors

“…Spanking is a discipline strategy that has been used by over 90% of American parents at some point in their parenting history (Graziano & Namaste, 1990;Simons, Johnson, & Conger, 1994) and is widely used by parents in other countries as well (Straus, 1996). Yet parents' use of spanking has generated a considerable amount of public controversy related to concerns about the effects of physical discipline on children's development and ambiguities regarding where to draw the line between physical discipline and physical abuse.…”

“…Retrospective reports of college students about their parents' discipline strategies when they were children or retrospective reports provided by parents are the most common way of investigating effects of physical discipline (e.g., Graziano & Namaste, 1990), but this method is limited by inaccurate memories and retrospective biases. Perhaps the most accurate way of measuring parents' use of physical discipline is through detailed diaries in which each discipline episode is recorded (Larzelere, Schneider, Larson, & Pike, 1996).…”

Retrospective reports of family-of-origin divorce and abuse and college student's pre-parenthood cognitions

“…These high rates may reflect that fact that physical discipline tactics such as spanking are normative in American culture (Graziano and Namaste, 1990;Straus, 1991). Although there was a tendency for participants to report more mild physical victimization from their mother than from their father, this result should be treated cautiously in the absence of other context-sensitive information about the physical acts that were experienced (i.e., injury rates, impact, employed for discipline purposes versus power assertion, time spent with mother versus father, etc.…”