Citation

Ringwalt CL, Browne DC, Rosenbloom LB, Evans GA, Kotch JB. J. Fam. Violence 1989; 4(4): 339-351.

Affiliation

Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 27514 Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Department of Counseling Psychology, School of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 27514

Copyright

(Copyright © 1989, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/BF00978575

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between mothers'' approval of corporal punishment and the degree to which they themselves were subjected to violence as children. Considered as additional contributing factors are: (1) whether the mothers as children were punished by their own parents, (2) whether they perceived such punishment as unfair, and (3) the degree of parental nurture they experienced as children. The sample consisted of 330 new mothers whose mother and father both lived in the home when they were 14 years of age. Respondents were interviewed at home one to two months following their infants'' discharge from the hospital. After controlling for race and income, no relationship was found between approval of corporal punishment and the violence to which mothers were subjected as children. However, significant associations were found between such approval and: (1) whether mothers were punished by their parents, and (2) maternal (but not paternal) nurture. Perceptions that parental punishment was unfair failed to contribute to such approval. Altogether, parental factors in mothers'' childhoods, excluding race and income, accounted for 8.9% of the variance in approval of corporal punishment.