The Characteristics Of Corporal Punishment And Its Relationships With Child Adjustment In Elementary School

Parental use of corporal punishment (i.e., spanking or hitting a child for a transgression) is a common method of disciplining children, which is defined as"the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child pain, but not injury, for the purposes of correction or control of the child's behavior". According to Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems framework, many factors from different ecological levels may affect whether and how frequently parents use corporal punishment. However, here is a paucity of information on parental corporal punishment in Chinese societies, and the present study aims to explore this phenomenon among Chinese families. Additionally, although the relationship between corporal punishment and child adjustment have received a great deal of research attention, the studies in this area have historically focused on corporal punishment as a predictor or cause and child adjustment as an outcome, while child-driven effects has largely been ignored. Recently a growing body of research suggests that the association between parental discipline and child adjustment is explained by both parent-driven and child-driven effects that most likely operate via reciprocal processes. And considering the outcomes may be distinct for mild and harsh corporal punishment. The present study empirically examined the bidirectional casual association between corporal punishment and child adjustment by conducting parallel analyses for mild and harsh corporal punishment.Influential reviews in recent years suggest that most researchers who attempted to seek how and under what conditions corporal punishment might have certain effects on children focused heavily on behavioral and cognitive mechanism. This clearly highlights the importance of further clarification of the affective mechanisms underlying the parent-driven effects. Further, fewer research explored the mechanism underlying the child-driven effects. In sum, Based on prior research, we also examined whether the child's emotional regulation would mediate the effect of corporal punishment on child adjustment and whether the parental attitude toward corporal punishment would moderate the child-driven effects.To address above issues, 1138 children and their parents from one elementary school in Jinan, Shandong Province were included in the longitudinal study, whom have been assessed in an internal of half a year. And the Conflict Tactics Scale of Parent-Child(CTSPC), Child Behavior Checklist(CBCL) or Youth Self-Report(YSR), Emotion Regulation Checklist(ERC), Attitude Toward Physical Punishment(ATPP) were respectively used to collect data. The main findings of the study were as follows:1 About sixty-four percent of parents and fifty-one percent of children reported at least one incident of some form of corporal punishment in the past six month. Of parents who used corporal punishement at least once during the previous six month, thirteen percentage have used harsh corporal punishement and reported using corporal punishement an average of 5 times, while according to the children's report, more than thirty percentage have experienced harsh corporal punishment, and the frequency was as high as 15 times.2 The prevalence, frequency and severity of corporal punishement were all higher for boys than for girls. For age difference, on the whole, the prevalence of corporal punishment decreased with increasing grade, harsh corporal punishment were used most possible with children in early or late childhood, and no significant age difference in frequency existed. Additionally, the study found that the higher the SES was, the lower the percentage using corporal punishement or harsh corporal punishement was.3 Child-driven effects existed in the parental report, while bidirection-effects existed in the child's report. Additinally, the direction of relationship were distinct for mild and harsh corporal punishment. That is parent-driven effects were more easily to be found when mild corporal punishment was used, whereas bidirection-effects were more easily to be found when harsh corporal punishment was used. Furthermore, child-driven effects were much stronger than parent-driven effects. 4 Children's emotion regulation could partly or fully mediate the parent-driven effects. That is, parental mild corporal punishment could cause children's internalizing problem behaviors partly through influencing children's emotion regulation, and severe corporal punishment cause children's externalizing problem behaviors fully through influencing children's emotion regulation.5 Parental attitude toward corporal punishment could moderate the child-driven effects. Parental disapproval attitude toward corporal punishment could actually buffer parents from the influences of children's problem behaviors.