Social Change and the Trends in Approval of Corporal Punishment by Parents from 1968 to 1994

Socioeconomic Gaps in Parents’ Discipline Strategies From 1988 to 2011

“…16 At the time, popular support for physical discipline was in decline, and the popularity of nonphysical discipline strategies, such as time-outs, was rising. 13,14 The current study suggests that these cultural shifts reflect real changes in the way parents discipline children. Our results also show changes in discipline strategies before and after 1998, suggesting the AAP statement reflected and possibly catalyzed these shifts.…”

“…2,11,12 It is possible, however, that this parenting gap in discipline strategies has changed over time. Over the past 30 years, public support for corporal punishment has declined sharply, both in terms of attitudes toward 13,14 and parents' actual use of physical discipline. 15 This cultural shift may have affected lower SES parents more than higher SES parents because their initial rates of corporal punishment were higher.…”

“…We examine these trends in parents of kindergarten-age children because age 5, the typical age of kindergarten entry, is among the most common ages for parents to use spanking. 13,15 Beginning in 1986, the NLSY began collecting information biennially on the biological children of the female NLSY respondents. We use data from the 1988 or 1990 waves of data collection, which provides our earliest data point (data from 1988 were used if data were missing in 1990).…”

Corporal Punishment by Mothers and Development of Children's Cognitive Ability: A Longitudinal Study of Two Nationally Representative Age Cohorts

“…This may be part of the reason why content analyses of child development textbooks in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s found that, on average, the books devoted less than a page to this important aspect of the socialization of U.S. children (Straus & Stewart, 1999). We suggest that misperception of the extent of CP is an example of "selective inattention" (Dexter, 1958) by members of a society in which CP is the statistical and cultural norm (Straus & Mathur, 1996). Selective inattention may be one of the mechanisms that enables our society to continue to support CP because it avoids the necessity of facing up to the fact that almost all children are hit, and many are hit frequently.…”

Assessing Parenting Behaviors across Racial Groups: Implications for the Child Welfare System

“…For example, there is some evidence that blacks and whites differ in their acceptance of physical discipline and corporal punishment (Straus and Mathur 1996), as well as their rates of utilizing such practices (Wolfner and Gelles 1993;Dietz, 2000). Additionally, regarding racial and ethnic differences in HOME scores, Bradley and colleagues (2001) find that, while there are considerable differences between whites, blacks, and Hispanics, the majority of these differences can be explained by poverty status, something we will examine in more detail below.…”