| The purpose of this study was to use an ecological perspective to longitudinally investigate the relation between harsh discipline, which consists of physical and psychological discipline, and externalizing behaviors in children. In this study, harsh discipline refers to the disciplinary practices which are likely to result in physical and psychological pain or fear but not injury on the part of the child. More specifically, this study focused on models examining three sets of relations among the key variables of interest: (1) the individual change trajectory of externalizing behaviors relating to harsh discipline and child temperament, (2) the reciprocal relations between harsh discipline and children's externalizing behaviors over time, and (3) the relations among children's temperament, harsh discipline, children's externalizing behaviors, and exposure to violence in the neighborhood.;This study used the data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN); the subsample of interest was the age 3 cohort group from Wave 1 which includes 1003 children and their primary caregivers. Of the primary caregivers in the sample, 45.5% were Latino, 16.8% were Caucasian, 34.7% were African American, 94.2% were female, and 5.8% were male. Of the focal children in the sample, 50.1% were male and 49.9% were female. For research questions and hypotheses, multivariate analyses including latent growth curve, cross-lagged model, and path analysis using structural equation modeling were employed.;The results showed that harsh discipline, including physical and psychological discipline, challenging temperamental characteristics, and exposure to violence in the neighborhood had significant relations with externalizing behavior in children over time. Consistent with prior research, physical discipline was associated with higher levels of externalizing behavior. Psychological discipline was also associated with higher levels of externalizing behavior; there was little prior research investigating the relation between psychological discipline and externalizing behavior. Moreover, exposure to violence in the neighborhood was related to increases in harsh discipline and externalizing behavior. Further analyses showed, in particular, that exposure to violence was a risk for externalizing behavior among the African American children and among males, and a higher level of activity was a risk for externalizing behavior among females. |
