A Cross-Cultural Examination of the Link Between Corporal Punishment and Adolescent Antisocial Behavior* (original) (raw)

Several studies with older children have reported a positive relationship between parental use of corporal punishment and child conduct problems. This has lead some social scientists to conclude that physical discipline fosters antisocial behavior. In an attempt to avoid the methodological dificulties that have plagued past research on this issue, the present study used a proportional measure of corporal punishment, controlled for earlier behavior problems and other dimensions of parenting, and tested for interaction and curvilinear effects. The analyses were performed using a sample of Iowa families that displayed moderate use of corporal punishment and a Taiwanese sample that demonstrated more frequent and severe use of physical discipline, especially by fathers. For both samples, level of parental warmthkontrol (i.e., support, monitoring, and inductive reasoning) was the strongest predictor of adolescent conduct problems. There was little evidence of a relationship between corporal punishment and conduct problems f o r 47 48 SIMONS ET AL.

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