Objective
Research has found corporal punishment to have limited effectiveness in altering child behavior and the potential to produce psychological and cognitive damage. Pediatric professionals have advocated reducing, if not eliminating its use. Despite this, it remains a common parenting practice in the US.
Methods
Using a three-group randomized design, this study explored whether embedding educational information about typical child development and effective parenting in baby books could alter new mothers’ attitudes about their use of corporal punishment. Low-income, ethnically diverse women (n = 167) were recruited during their third trimester of pregnancy and followed until their child was 18 months old.
Results
Findings from home-based data collection throughout this period suggest that educational baby books compared with non-educational baby books or no books can reduce new mothers’ support for the use of corporal punishment (respective effect sizes = .67 and .25) and that these effects are greater for African-American mothers (effect sizes = .75 and .57) and those with low levels of educational attainment (high school diploma, GED, or less) (effect sizes = .78 and .49).
Conclusion
Given their low cost and ease of implementation, baby books offer a promising way to change new mothers’ attitudes and potentially reduce the use of corporal punishment with infants and toddlers.
US parents have long supported corporal punishment as a method for disciplining children (Paolucci & Violato, 2004) and surveys have typically found that the use of corporal punishment is widespread (Gallup Organization, 1995). Corporal punishment often begins as early as infancy and, in a 1995 survey of 991 households, Straus and Stewart (1999) found that 32% of parents reported spanking their infants and 72% spanked their toddlers. This same survey found that the frequency and severity of corporal punishment peaked when children were between 3 and 5 years of age. Furthermore, younger parents, those with lower socio-economic status, and mothers in particular were more likely to use corporal punishment with their children.
While the use of corporal punishment is common, research has found negative consequences of its use for children (Slade & Wissow, 2004). A meta-analysis found corporal punishment, defined as the use of physical force in an effort to control behavior and without intention to cause harm, to be associated with increased child and later adult aggression, increased delinquent, antisocial, and criminal behavior, increased risk of abusing one's own child or spouse, reduced moral internalization, increased risk of being a victim, and decreased adult mental health (Gershoff, 2002). The only beneficial effect found was that corporal punishment was associated with immediate compliance.
Given the association of corporal punishment with poor psychological and behavioral outcomes, more effort has been placed on discouraging parents from using corporal punishment, especially for younger children. For instance, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that other forms of discipline be used (such as time out and redirection) and that corporal punishment not be used with infants (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1998). Given its common use, and evidence of its negative impact, ways to change parents’ attitudes about the use of corporal punishment appear to be warranted. One possible mechanism for reducing the use of corporal punishment, especially with very young children, could be through parental education.
Previous studies have found parent education to be beneficial for changing parental attitudes and practices about the use of corporal punishment. For instance, the Parents as Teachers program found that the use of regular parent group meetings and home visits by a certified parent educator could significantly change parental attitudes about physical forms of discipline (Wagner, Spiker, & Linn, 2002). Similarly, Nicholson, Anderson, Fox, and Brenner (2002) found that, after a 10-week parent education program, the intervention group used significantly fewer verbal and physical forms of discipline than the comparison group. Fennell and Fishel (2007) found that the Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP), a 9-week parent education program, to be effective in changing parents’ attitudes about their child and support of physical modes of discipline. The Nurturing Parenting Program, a program designed for adult and adolescent parents, reduced parents’ support of the use of corporal punishment (Kaplan & Bavolek, 2007). Numerous other programs have found parent education to be effective in reducing the use of corporal punishment and occurrence of child maltreatment (e.g., Dubowitz et al., 2009, Duggana et al., 2004 and Huebner, 2002). However, these educational interventions tend to be time intensive and expensive to implement, suggesting that other mechanisms for educating parents should be explored.
Using a three-group randomized design, this study found that embedding educational information into baby books is an effective method for changing new mothers’ parenting attitudes, especially the endorsement of corporal punishment. These findings are promising as the intervention is low-cost, easy to implement, and prone to increase the likelihood of mothers reading to their infants and toddlers.
