Abstract
Objective
To determine the association between use of physical discipline and parental report
of physically aggressive child behaviors in a cohort of young children who were without
indicators of current or past physical abuse.
Methods
The data for this study were analyzed from an initial cohort of patients enrolled
in a prospective, observational, multicenter pediatric emergency department-based
study investigating bruising and familial psychosocial characteristics of children
younger than 4 years of age. Over a 7-month period, structured parental interviews
were conducted regarding disciplinary practices, reported child behaviors, and familial
psychosocial risk factors. Children with suspected physical abuse were excluded from
this study. Trained study staff collected data using standardized questions. Consistent
with grounded theory, qualitative coding by 2 independent individuals was performed
using domains rooted in the data. Inter-rater reliability of the coding process was
evaluated using the kappa statistic. Descriptive statistics were calculated and multiple
logistic regression modeling was performed.
Results
Three hundred seventy-two parental interviews were conducted. Parents who reported
using physical discipline were 2.8 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.7–4.5) times more
likely to report aggressive child behaviors of hitting/kicking and throwing. Physical
discipline was used on 38% of children overall, and was 2.4 (95% CI, 1.4–4.1) times
more likely to be used in families with any of the psychosocial risk factors examined.
Conclusions
Our findings indicated that the use of physical discipline was associated with higher
rates of reported physically aggressive behaviors in early childhood as well as with
the presence of familial psychosocial risk factors.
Keywords
To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
Purchase one-time access:
Academic & Personal: 24 hour online accessCorporate R&D Professionals: 24 hour online accessOne-time access price info
- For academic or personal research use, select 'Academic and Personal'
- For corporate R&D use, select 'Corporate R&D Professionals'
Subscribe:
Subscribe to Academic PediatricsAlready a print subscriber? Claim online access
Already an online subscriber? Sign in
Register: Create an account
Institutional Access: Sign in to ScienceDirect
References
- American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health. Guidance for effective discipline.Pediatrics. 1998; 101: 723-728
- Parents' discipline of young children: results from the national survey of early childhood development.Pediatrics. 2004; 113: 1952-1958
- Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: a meta-analytic and theoretical review.Psychol Bull. 2002; 128: 539-579
- Subabusive violence in child rearing in middle-class American families.Pediatrics. 1996; 98: 845-848
- A review of the outcomes of parental use of nonabusive or customary physical punishment.Pediatrics. 1996; 98: 824-828
- Comparing child outcomes of physical punishment and alternative disciplinary tactics: a meta-analysis.Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev. 2005; 8: 1-36
- Mothers' spanking of 3-year old children and subsequent risk of children's aggressive behavior.Pediatrics. 2010; 125: e1057-e1065
- The emergence of spanking among a representative sample of children under 2 years of age in North Carolina.Front Psychiatry. 2011; 2: 36
- Speak softly-and forget the stick. Corporal punishment and child physical abuse.Am J Prev Med. 2008; 35: 364-369
- Physical punishment and mental disorders: results from a nationally representative US sample.Pediatrics. 2013; 130: 184-192
- Spanking in early childhood and later behavior problems: a prospective study of infants and young toddlers.Pediatrics. 2004; 113: 1321-1330
- Corporal punishment and primary prevention of physical abuse.Child Abuse Negl. 2000; 24: 1109-1114
- Preventing abusive head trauma resulting from a failure of normal interaction between infants and their caregivers.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012; 109: 17294-17301
- Spanking and child development: we know enough now to stop hitting our children.Child Dev Perspect. 2013; 7: 133-137
- Integrating biological and social processes in relation to early-onset persistent aggression in boys and girls.Dev Psychol. 2003; 39: 309-323
- Factors affecting the link between physical discipline and child externalizing problems in black and white families.J Comm Psychol. 2006; 34: 89-103
- The impact of early maltreatment on behavioral trajectories.Child Abuse Negl. 2010; 34: 907-916
- Parenting attitudes and infant spanking: the influence of childhood experiences.Pediatrics. 2009; 124: e278-e286
- Paternal psychosocial characteristics and corporal punishment of their 3-year old children.J Interpers Violence. 2011; 26: 71-87
- Child, maternal, and family characteristics associated with spanking.Family Relations. 1995; 44: 170-176
- The prevalence of bruising among infants in Pediatric Emergency Departments.Ann Emerg Med. 2016; 67: 1-8
- Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults.Am J Prev Med. 1998; 14: 245-258
- Adverse childhood experiences and the risk of premature mortality.Am J Prev Med. 2009; 37: 389-396
- Clinical monitoring of treatment course in child physical abuse: psychometric characteristics and treatment comparisons.Child Abuse Negl. 1996; 20: 23-43
- Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis.Sociology Press, Mill Valley, CA1992
- Judging interpretations: but is it rigorous? Trustworthiness and authenticity in naturalistic evaluation.New Directions for Evaluation. 2007; 114: 11-25
- R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing.R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria2014 (Available at:) (Accessed January 4, 2016)
- Relationships between parents' use of corporal punishment and their children's endorsement of spanking and hitting other children.Child Abuse Negl. 2010; 34: 639-646
- The intergenerational transmission of physical punishment: differing mechanisms in mothers' and fathers' endorsement?.J Fam Viol. 2006; 21: 509-519
- Linking mother and youth parenting attitudes: indirect effects via maltreatment, parent involvement, and youth functioning.Child Maltreat. 2014; 19: 233-246
- A reinterpretation of the direction of effects in studies of socialization.Psychol Rev. 1968; 75: 81-95
- The transactional model.in: Sameroff A.J. The Transactional Model of Development: How Children and Contexts Shape Each Other. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC2009: 3-21
- Does warmth moderate longitudinal associations between maternal spanking and child aggression in early childhood?.Dev Psychol. 2013; 49: 2017-2028
- Ethnicity, income, and parenting contexts of physical punishment in a national sample of families with young children.Child Maltreat. 2001; 6: 118-129
- Evaluation of suspected physical abuse.Pediatrics. 2007; 119: 1232-1341
American Academy of Pediatrics. Practicing Safety Module Practice Guide: Effective Discipline. Available at: https://www2.aap.org/sections/scan/practicingsafety/Modules/EffectiveDiscipline/EffectiveDiscipline.pdf. Accessed December 31, 2015.
Bright Futures Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents. Infancy: Prenatal to 11 months. Available at: https://brightfutures.aap.org/Bright%20Futures%20Documents/15-Infancy.pdf. Accessed December 31, 2015.
- Correlates and consequences of spanking and verbal punishment for low-income white, African American, and Mexican American toddlers.Child Dev. 2009; 80: 1403-1420
- Mother and father self-reports of corporal punishment and severe physical aggression toward clinic-referred youth.J Clin Child Psychol. 2000; 29: 266-281
- Bruises in infants and toddlers: those who don't cruise rarely bruise.Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1999; 153: 399-403
- Why should child welfare pay more attention to emotional maltreatment?.Child Youth Serv Rev. 2015; 50: 53-63
- Corporal punishment by American parents: national data on prevalence, chronicity, severity, duration, in relation to child and family characteristics.Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev. 1999; 2: 55-70
Article Info
Publication History
Published online: February 25, 2016
Accepted:
February 20,
2016
Received:
August 13,
2015
Footnotes
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Identification
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Academic Pediatric Association
