African-American and Anglo-American children's assessments of four disciplinary methods (spanking, reasoning, withdrawing privileges, and time-out) were investigated with 108 children ages 6–10 years old and one of their parents. Children watched videos depicting a child being disciplined and then rated each discipline method. Reasoning was rated as most fair, spanking as least fair. Spanking was regarded most effective for immediate compliance but not for long-term behavior change. Children with medium high levels of exposure to spanking were more likely to regard it as the best disciplinary technique compared with children with low or high exposure levels. Younger children rated spanking as fairer than older children. No differences were found between African-American and Anglo-American children's assessments after controlling for exposure to spanking and socioeconomic status. Implications about the role of children's assessments of discipline for internalization are discussed.
Child discipline and its effectiveness have been studied for more than half a century. However, the 1990s marked a decade of change in conceptualizations concerning the purpose and effectiveness of punishment. This transformation was largely due to the increased recognition of the role of children's social cognitions. An influential article by Grusec and Goodnow (1994) led the way. They proposed that internalization is the key to long-term behavior change. Internalization occurs when a person takes the values of society as one's own and thus, appropriate behavior is motivated by internal rather than external factors. Grusec and Goodnow proposed internalization to be a two-pronged meditational process. A child must first accurately perceive the parental message, and then, in order for behavioral change to occur, the child must accept it. This recognition of the child's role in effective discipline and internalization is in stark contrast to the unidirectional view that has characterized much of the research on the topic (Dobbs & Duncan, 2004, Grusec & Kuczynski, 1997 and Maccoby, 1992).
The goal of discipline is to shape the child into being an appropriately self-regulated individual. Self-regulation occurs when the child has internalized a moral norm and thus believes that compliance with the norm is self-generated rather than imposed. Central to the behavioral change process outlined by Grusec and Goodnow (1994), and subsequently refined by Gershoff (2002), is the child's evaluation and acceptance of the parental regulatory message. Acceptance requires that the child perceives the message as appropriate for the circumstances and that the child is motivated to comply with the message. Children's views of the legitimacy and fairness of their parents' requests or punishments are thus likely to be a key determinant in children's acceptance of and potential compliance with such demands (Laupa & Turiel, 1986 and Tisak, 1986). However, relatively few studies have examined children's evaluations of discipline. Most investigations have focused on disciplinary practices and effectiveness from the parent's point of view. That creates a limited understanding of the role of discipline in children's lives, given that parents and children sometimes interpret discipline events very differently. For example, Dobbs & Duncan, 2004 and Willow & Hyder, 1998 found that while adults often interpret spanking as “a gentle tap or a loving slap” (Dobbs & Duncan, p. 376), most of the children defined it as a “hard hit” or a “very hard hit.” The children in these studies also reported that adults are usually angry when they spank, whereas parents often report that they do not spank while angry. Thus, in order to get a more complete picture of the context and experiences of discipline, it is important to also understand children's perspectives. This study was designed to investigate children's assessments of several commonly used disciplinary techniques with a focus on corporal punishment.
Children's reaction to corporal punishment, most frequently operationalized as spanking, is a useful variable to study for several reasons. First, corporal punishment is salient and memorable so children are likely to have formed opinions about it. Second, across families, there is wide variability in its use (Holden, Coleman, & Schmidt, 1995). Third, few investigators have studied children's opinions about corporal punishment. In the work that has been done (e.g., Carlson, 1986, Dobbs & Duncan, 2004, Herzberger & Tennen, 1985, Rohner et al., 1996 and Willow & Hyder, 1998), children's assessments of corporal punishment have generally not been studied in relation to other less severe disciplinary techniques. It is useful to include reactions to other discipline methods along with spanking, because comparisons can be made to better gauge children's evaluations. Finally, given the continuing controversy over the use of corporal punishment, collecting children's opinions adds their voice to the debate.
