The Moderating Role of Mothers’ Endorsement of Corporal Punishment and Child Adjustment in Eight Countries

• In Event: 3-026 - Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Parenting and Children’s Socioemotional Functioning and Academic Achievement

Integrative Statement

Much has been written about the relation between the use of corporal punishment and child adjustment (see Gershoff, 2002 for overview), with the majority of the extant literature establishing a firm link between increased use of corporal punishment and greater internalizing and externalizing behavior in children (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016). In recent years the field has expanded to include the study of these relations in diverse cultural contexts. Even while some evidence suggests that the cultural normativeness of corporal punishment as a parenting practice has a moderating effect on the strength of the relation with child adjustment (Lansford et al., 2005), the relation with negative child outcomes is still significant. More cross-national research is needed to unpack the factors that influence the strength of the relation between corporal punishment and increased internalizing and externalizing behaviors in children, and examine the conditions under which they occur. There is little in the present literature that specifically examines the role of parental beliefs around the use of corporal punishment, and how that endorsement interacts with corporal punishment and relates to child outcomes.
Interviews were conducted with 7-11-year-old children, (N =1387; mean age = 8.56 ; 51% girls) at time 1 and 8-13 year-old children at time 2 (N =1295; mean age = 10.67) and their mothers and fathers in China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Thailand, and the United States. Children completed 53 items from the Youth Self-Report of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991). Children were asked how true each statement was in describing their behavior in the past 6 months (not true, somewhat or sometimes true, or very true or often true). Mothers and fathers also completed the 58 item CBCL, and mothers completed a report of corporal punishment (UNICEF, 2006), which asked them to report about the use of corporal punishment by anyone in the home in the last 30 days. Sample items from this measure include, “Hit or slapped him/her on the hand, arm, or leg,” and “Shook him/her.”
Mothers’ responses also included an endorsement item, “Do you think it is necessary to use physical punishment in order to raise your child properly?” When the sites were analyzed together, mothers’ endorsement of the use of physical punishment at time 1 moderated the relation between the use of corporal punishment by anyone in the home and child internalizing and externalizing behavior at time 2 as reported by mothers, fathers and children. That is, the relation between corporal punishment and internalizing and externalizing behavior was stronger when mothers reported that they did not endorse its use. Further analyses will include accounting for the nesting of individuals within families and examining site differences. Findings will be discussed in the context of how parental beliefs and actions can interact to influence child behavior in different cultural contexts.

Authors

• Ann T. Skinner, Duke University
  Presenting Author

• Anna Gassman-Pines, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer Godwin, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer Lansford, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laurence D. Steinberg, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sombat Tapanya, Chiang Mai University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Universidad San Buenaventura
  Non-Presenting Author

• Saengduean Yotanyamaneewong, Chiang Mai University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Liane P. Alampay, Ateneo de Manila University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Suha M. Al-Hassan, Emirates College for Advanced Education
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dario Bacchini, University of Naples Federico II
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marc H. Bornstein, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development & Institute for Fiscal Studies, London, UK
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lei Chang, University of Macau
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kirby Deater-Deckard, University Massachusetts
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Di Giunta, Sapienza University of Rome
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kenneth A. Dodge, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Patrick S. Malone, Malone Quantitative
  Non-Presenting Author

• Paul Oburu, Maseno University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Concetta Pastorelli, Sapienza University of Rome
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emma Sorbring, University West
  Non-Presenting Author