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Physical Discipline and Behavior Problems in African American, European American, andHispanic Children: Emotional Support as a ModeratorAuthor(s): Vonnie C. McLoyd and Julia SmithSource: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Feb., 2002), pp. 40-53Published by: National Council on Family RelationsNational Council on Family RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3599775Accessed: 14/09/2010 20:43

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VONNIE . MCLOYD ND ULIA MITHUniversity f Michigan

Physical Discipline nd Behavior Problems n African

American, uropean merican, nd Hispanic Children:

Emotional upport s a Moderator

Using data collected over a 6-year period on asample of 1,039 European American hildren, 50African American children, and 401 Hispanicchildren rom the children of the National Lon-gitudinal Survey of Youth, this study assessedwhether maternal emotional support of the childmoderates he relation between panking and be-havior problems. Children were 4-5 years of agein the first of 4 waves of data used (1988, 1990,1992, 1994). At each wave, mothers eported heiruse of spanking and rated their children's behav-ior problems. Maternal emotional support of thechild was based on interviewer bservations on-ducted as part of the Home Observation or Mea-surement of the Environment. or each of the 3racial-ethnic groups, spanking predicted an in-crease in the level of problem behavior over time,controlling or income-needs atio and maternal

emotional support. Maternal emotional supportmoderated he link between panking nd problembehavior. Spanking was associated with an in-crease in behavior problems over time n the con-text of low levels of emotional upport, but not inthe context of high levels of emotional support.This pattern held or all 3 racial-ethnic roups.

Surveys indicate that the majority of Americanparents endorse corporal punishment s a child-rearing practice and use it to discipline heir chil-dren (Day, Peterson, & McCracken, 1998; Gils-Sims, Straus, & Sugarman, 995; Straus & Gelles,1986). Corporal punishment varies in intensityfrom spanking, ypically defined as striking hechild on the buttocks or extremities with an openhand without nflicting physical njury, o physicalabuse, consisting of beatings and other forms ofextreme physical force that inflict bodily injury.Whereas spanking falls within the normativerange of socialization practices within the UnitedStates, physical abuse does not (Baumrind, 997).Several studies have found that parental use ofphysical discipline s positively related o behav-ioral (e.g., aggression) and psychological (e.g.,dysphoria, ow self-esteem) problems n children

and adolescents, but these relations are markedlystronger n samples of clinically aggressive chil-dren (where frequency and intensity of physicaldiscipline tend to be higher than in nonclinicalsamples) and samples of children who have beenphysically abused (Dodge, Pettit, Bates, & Val-ente, 1995; Loeber & Stouthamer-Loeber, 986;Strassberg, Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 1994; Straus,Sugarman, & Gils-Sims, 1997).

Given its high prevalence n the United States,it is clear that physical discipline hort of physical

abuse occurs within the context of a diversity ofparenting tyles and behaviors. Consequently, d-

Center for Human Growth and Development, University ofMichigan, 300 North Ingalls, Ann Arbor, MI 48109([email protected]).

Key Words: behavior problems, emotional support, ethnic-ity, physical discipline.

40 Journal f Marriage nd Family 64 (February 002): 40-53

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Physical Discipline 41

equate assessment of the effects of physical dis-cipline on children's development may requiretaking nto account he broader parenting ontext

within which physical discipline occurs. For ex-ample, studies ndicate hat physical discipline sunrelated o children's ocioemotional unctioning(e.g., aggression, delinquency, elf-esteem) oncedimensions of parenting ssociated with physicaldiscipline e.g., parental ejection, ow parental n-volvement) are taken nto account e.g., Larzelere,Klein, Schumm, & Alibrando, 1989; Rohner, Bo-urque, & Elordi, 1996; Simons, Johnson, & Con-ger, 1994). On the assumption hat the affectivequality of parent-child elations s an important

marker of parenting context, the present studyseeks to determine f the relation between physicaldiscipline and behavior problems s conditional nthe level of warmth and support mothers exhibittoward the child. We hypothesized hat the rela-tion between physical punishment and behaviorproblems would be intensified n the context oflow levels of maternal upport but attenuated nthe context of high levels of maternal upport.

The notion that the effects of physical disci-pline depend on when and why parents use phys-ical

disciplineas well as on the affective context

within which physical discipline occurs has manyproponents, ut direct empirical ests of these hy-pothesized moderation effects are surprisinglythin. Based on his synthesis of findings acrossstudies published n peer-reviewed ournals, Lar-zelere (1996) concluded hat nonabusive r "cus-tomary" physical discipline by parents ends o beassociated with positive or neutral outcomes inoffspring when the parenting ontext s marked yhigh levels of positive parental nvolvement, atendency o use physical discipline based on child-oriented rather han parent-oriented otives, con-sistent follow-through on disciplinary warnings,and absence of verbal putdowns and ridicule.However, Larzelere's onclusion about markers fthe parenting ontext that moderate he effects ofphysical punishment s not outcome specific andis based on a small number of primarily etro-spective studies with several methodological bi-ases and weaknesses.

More recently, Deater-Deckard and Dodge(1997) tested the affective quality of parent-childrelations as a moderator f the impact of physicalpunishment n their longitudinal ample of Afri-can American and European American amilies.They found hat positive correlations etween par-ents' use of harsh physical discipline when chil-dren were 5 years old and children's xternalizing

behavior during kindergarten hrough ixth gradeas reported by teachers were considerably oweramong amilies characterized y high levels of pa-

rental warmth and positive affect, compared ofamilies distinguished by low levels of parentalwarmth and positive affect. Although he moder-ation effect was not assessed in the conventionalform of a physical discipline by parental warmth/positive affect interaction ffect, Deater-Deckardand Dodge's analysis represents a strong test ofthe moderation ypothesis because t is based onprospective data and uses a reliable measure ofobserved parent-child warmth and multiple ndi-cators of parental physical discipline. Extrapolat-

ing from this finding, Deater-Deckard nd Dodgespeculated hat differences n the parenting on-text (e.g., prevalence nd acceptability f physicalpunishment nd parenting behaviors attendant othis form of discipline) may account or evidencethat parents' use of physical discipline s associ-ated with externalizing ehavior problems amongEuropean American children but not among Af-rican American children. This race by physicalpunishment nteraction was found when the mea-sure of externalizing ehavior roblems was basedon

ratingsrom teachers and

peers,but not when

it was based on maternal atings Deater-Deckard& Dodge, 1997; Deater-Deckard, odge, Bates,& Pettit, 1996).

McCord 1997) assessed parental warmth as amoderator f the effects of corporal punishmentin her sample of impoverished, urban boys fol-lowed over a period of four decades, but her out-comes were criminality nd violence n adulthood,rather han child externalizing ehavior. Corporalpunishment y fathers ncreased he likelihood ofcriminal behavior among sons, whereas corporalpunishment by mothers increased rates of vio-lence. Although maternal nd paternal warmth e-duced the probability hat sons would commit se-rious crimes, t had no effect on violence, nor didit moderate he effects of corporal punishment.Rarer still are studies that examine the effects ofthe context of corporal punishment n children'scognitive development. Using longitudinal datafrom the Infant Health and Development Program,a randomized linical trial of low-birth-weight n-fants, Smith and Brooks-Gunn 1997) found thatpreschool girls who experienced high levels ofpunishment i.e., hitting and scolding) n the con-text of low maternal warmth had significantlylower IQ scores than those who experienced owlevels of punishment nd high maternal warmth.However, hese two groups did not differ rom the

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42 Journal of Marriage and Family

low punishment/low warmth group or the highpunishment/high armth group.

Further valuation of the moderation ypoth-

esis is warranted n light of its prominence n thesocialization iterature nd the fact that direct estsof the hypothesis are sparse and have yielded con-flicting findings. Several features of the presentstudy permit a relatively tringent est of emotion-al support and warmth as moderators f the rela-tion between physical punishment and behaviorproblems: a) we assess the relation between ma-ternal physical discipline and changes n child be-havior problems over time, (b) we directly testwhether maternal motional support ignificantly

interacts with physical discipline n its impact onchild behavior problems, (c) moderation ffectsare examined within three different racial-ethnicgroups, and (d) moderation ffects are estimatedafter introducing controls for important demo-graphic variables uch as gender and income-to-needs ratios.

METHOD

Data andSample

Data were a subset of the children of the NationalLongitudinal urvey of Youth NLSY), an expan-sion of the fifth cohort of National LongitudinalSurveys of Labor Market Experience. Of the5,828 women who were originally sampled in1979 as part of this survey, 3,053 were identifiedas having had children n = 5,236) by the 1988round of surveys, which constitutes he base yearof this study. These children make up the poolfrom which the analytic sample of this study isdrawn. It should be noted that this sample s nota national epresentative ample of children.

Our analysis ocuses on change n the BehaviorProblems ndex (BPI), which was administered n1988, 1990, 1992, and 1994. This instrument anbe used with children as young as 4 years old, soour sample selection criterion or this study wasa child who was 4 in 1988. This decision gave usan analytic ample of the younger children of theNLSY sample, namely the 1,990 children whowere 2-3 years old in 1986 (and hence were 4-5years old in 1988 and 10-11 years old in 1994).The sample consists of 401 Hispanic, 550 AfricanAmerican, and 1,039 European American chil-dren. Roughly half of the children are girls (48%of the Hispanics, 52% of the African Americans,and 50% of the European Americans).

Measures

Behavior problems. The BPI was developed by

Peterson and Zill (1986) using items drawn romthe Child Behavior Checklist and other behaviorproblem checklists. Maternal reports on itemsabout he child's behavior e.g., "Child clings toomuch to adults") comprise the full scale. Al-though this scale has classically been divided ntosubscales measuring nternalizing nd externaliz-ing problems the subscales are correlated t r =

.70), the full scale has better reliability .86) andmore interpretative larity (Mott, 1998). Ratherthan argue for conceptual differences, we focuson the full scale to indicate evel of behavior

prob-lems in total.In order o use this scale in a longitudinal nal-

ysis, it has been modified o that he unit of anal-ysis corresponds o each child's percentage n thetotal scale for each year. Growth curve modelingrequires comparable measures across each timepoint so that change rom one time to the next hasmeaning. Thus, it was necessary to adjust thiscomposite measure o that the units had the samemeaning across time. To do this, we formed thefinal outcome measure n three steps: a) The totalfor each child for each year was calculated. b)This total was divided by the total possible foreach year's scale and then multiplied y 100. Thiscomputation stablishes a position or "level" ofbehavior problems for each child in each year,which can then be compared cross years. (c) Wesubtracted he average evel for each racial-ethnicgroup n 1988 (base year) from every score. Thisthird calculation ranslates very child's score sothat it is "centered" at the group mean, givingeach group the same starting point for compari-son. This centering does not change the size ofthe metric, only the point of comparison.

Spanking. n 1988, interviewers oted whether ornot the mother hit the child during he course ofthe home observation. n subsequent years, thisobservation was not made. However, n all years,the survey tems included an open-ended uestionthat asked the mother o report how many timesshe spanked the focal child in the past week.These questions make up the measure f spankingused to predict children's behavior problems. Thedata for 1988 generated four-level ordinal caleof spanking. At the bottom of the scale (coded 0)are mothers who reported ot spanking heir childin the given week of 1988. At the next level (cod-ed 1) are mothers who reported spanking heir

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child once. Neither of these groups had any moth-ers who were observed hitting their child duringthe interview. At the next level (coded 2) are

mothers who reported panking more than oncebut who were not observed hitting heir child dur-ing the interview. At the top level (coded 3) aremothers who reported panking more than onceand were observed hitting their child during heinterview. For each of the subsequent ears 1990,1992, 1994), amount of spanking reported s as-sessed as a three-level ordinal cale (i.e., child notspanked, spanked once, or spanked more thanonce during week).

The 1988 measure of spanking s used in our

examination of spanking-related ifferences inproblem behavior during he base year. However,to capture he impact of spanking on change inbehavior problems over time, we use hierarchicallinear modeling HLM) echniques, with spankingas the outcome, to create two measures of the"spanking nvironment" f the child. One mea-sure, the Baysian estimate of the overall ntercept,measures the average amount the child wasspanked per week, experienced over 6 years. Forexample, one child might have been spanked an

average of once a week, another four timesa

week, another not at all. The second measure, heBaysian estimate of the slope, estimates thechange n spanking xperienced s the child aged.For example, if a child was spanked more at 4years of age than at 10 years of age, this measurewould be negative, whereas f a child was spankedmore as he or she got older, this measure wouldbe positive. If the amount of spanking tayed thesame over 6 years, this measure would have avalue of 0. These two measures are used as pre-dictors n

examininghe

changen behavior

prob-lems over the 6 years studied. This use of HLMto create child-level measures reduces the auto-correlation and error misestimation associatedwith simple averages. A full description of themethod can be found in Bryk and Raudenbush(1992).

Emotional upport. The measure f maternal mo-tional support s based on five items from theHome Observation or Measurement f the En-vironment HOME; Caldwell & Bradley, 1980).The HOME observations were conducted duringinterviewer visits in each year of the study. Theitems concern the amount of warmth and emo-tional support displayed toward he child by themother over the course of the observation as as-sessed by the interviewer e.g., mother caressed,

kissed, or hugged child during visit; conveyedpositive feeling about child; answered child'squestions or requests verbally; encouraged hild

to contribute o the conversation). The scale wasinternally tandardized y NLSY to be compara-ble across time as the child aged.

As was done with amount of spanking, the1988 emotional support cale was used as a cov-ariate or the baseline behavior problem evel. Inaddition, we constructed using HLM analysiswith emotional support as the outcome) an esti-mate for each child of the overall average emo-tional support ver the 6 years, and the change nsupport xperienced y that child over the 6 years

of the study. For example, one child pulled fromthe sample had a comparatively igh overall evelof emotional support over the 6 years (AverageSupport = 1.62 SD) and very little change overthat time (Change = 0.02 SD). Another hild hadan average evel of support cross he 6 years Av-erage Support = 0.05 SD), but it dropped sub-stantially over that time (Change = -1.2 SD).

Controls. Because of gender differences n behav-ior problems, gender s taken into account n all

analyses. Similarly, although the sample cohortwas initially selected within a limited age span,differences could still emerge related to age inmonths. Thus age (in months) was also controlledin all initial analyses. However, unlike gender, gewas not a significant redictor n any analysis andwas subsequently ropped rom the final analyses.

Controls also were introduced or family in-come. We derived an income-to-needs atio by di-viding the family's total income by the officialpoverty hreshold or that year. The poverty evel

for each child comes from NLSY and is drawnfrom the federal level declared or that year ad-justed for family size.) This ratio estimates amilyincome n a metric hat akes poverty as its criticalreferent. For example, a ratio of 1 indicates hatthe family's ncome s exactly at the poverty evelfor that year, whereas a ratio of 2 indicates thatthe family has income twice that of the povertythreshold. As was done with amount of spanking,the 1988 income-needs atio was used as a cov-ariate for the baseline behavior problem level.Similarly, o capture he family's economic well-being over the 6-year period of the study, HLMwas used to provide an estimate or both the av-erage level of the income-to-needs atio over thisperiod and the change in income-to-needs atioexperienced by families during his time.

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Analytic Method

We analyzed hese data in stages, building from

simple bivariate comparisons o full multivariateanalysis of change. We use one-way analysis ofvariance ANOVA) to examine racial-ethnic if-ferences in the BPI (item level and composite),environmental onditions, and controls. In theseanalyses, we have adjusted he significance evelbecause of multiple ests, so that only those dif-ferences ound at a significance evel of p < .001are reported. n addition, we examine the unad-justed correlations mong all measures used in theanalyses o provide some sense of how these fac-tors

maybe

operatingn tandem. t should be

keptin mind, however, hat hese latter elations re notnecessarily sustained n the multivariate ontext(precisely because of some of the multicollinearityinvolved between predictors).

The analyses of behavior roblems re all donewith growth curve analysis using HLM. This ana-lytic method estimates a change unction or eachchild by nesting ndividual measures within person.It then uses parameters f that change function-the "intercept" nd "slope" of each child's line--as a person-level utcome on which characteristicssuch as gender, panking, amily ncome, and emo-tional support an be explored. This type of two-level model is analytically ppropriate or lookingat nested data structures, uch as this case ofchange n behavior ver time nested within person.A more complete discussion of this analytic meth-od can be found n Bryk and Raudenbush 1992).We provide only an overview here.

HLM examines variance within and betweenpersons, imilar o the way that repeated measuresANOVA does. However, t does this by runningwhat amounts o a small regression quation oreach person, of the form Y = 30 + pl3(Time) +E. When he outcome of this regression s behavior,30 estimates ach individual hild's behavior evelat Time 0 (1988), and 31 measures he change nthat child's behavior over time (from 1988 to1994). These two parameters re conditionally e-lated, n that each is adjusted or the other.

These two adjusted estimates about a child'sbehavior are then lifted to the next level of theanalysis to be the outcomes on which other child

characteristics re predicted. For example, theHLM equation ooking at individual differencesin initial behavior would take the form:

30 = y00 + ~y01(Female)

+ y02(Spanking n 1988) + etc.

Similarly, he equation ooking at change n be-havior would take the form:

p3 =-10+

y11 Female)+ yl2(Average Level of Spanking)+ etc.

Each parameter termed gamma o distinguishfrom the betas n Level 1) provides an estimate ofthe effect of that variable. For example, y-01 pro-vides an estimate or the difference n initial be-havior problems between boys and girls, whereasyll estimates he gender difference n change n

behavior over time. Using this method, we canexamine ndividual differences elated o both ni-tial behavior (PO0) nd change in behavior overtime (p31)without he problems of autocorrelationamong common measures, which confounds mostrepeated measures nalyses for further iscussionof this issue, see Collins & Horn, 1991).

A common way to address he causal directiondifficulty s to predict an outcome by a measurepreceding hat outcome, for example, predictingchild behavior problems n 1990 by spanking n

1988. We use a variant of this process, but theproblem s more complicated ecause both behav-ior problems and spanking are changing overtime. We address this problem using a lagged-change estimation process, in which the changefunctions or both behavior described reviously)and spanking are estimated over time, with thespanking change assessed at the time point priorto the behavior problem estimates. This strategyfor examining ross-estimated hange unctions sdescribed more completely n Duncan and Rau-denbush

1999).We conducted our analysis n two stages, de-signed first to identify the impact of spankingwithout controls, and second to examine thechange in impact after controlling for environ-mental conditions i.e., family income and mater-nal emotional upport). n both stages, we exam-ined results separately for Hispanic, AfricanAmerican, and European American ubsamples.

RESULTS

Racial and Ethnic Differences

Table 1 shows comparisons or the critical predic-tor variables (spanking, poverty, and maternalwarmth) or each year broken down by racial-eth-nic group, with differences between groups ested

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TABLE 1. RACIAL-ETHNIC IFFERENCES N SPANKING, NCOME-NEEDS RATIO AND MATERNAL EMOTIONAL UPPORTOVER THE 6 YEARS STUDIED

African European

Variable Hispanic American American1988 levels

Amount spanked (M) .69, .91b .65aPercentage not spanked 48a 36b 49,Percentage spanked once last week, not observed hit 24 26 28Percentage spanked more than once last week, not observed hit 19, 27b 14,Percentage spanked more than once last week, observed hit 10 11 10

Family income-needs ratio (M) 1.74, 1.48b 2.18CMaternal emotional support scale (M) 87.5, 76.6b 90.3,1988-1994 average levels

Amount of spanking per week (M) .58, .97b .50,Family income-needs ratio (M) 1.96, 1.49b 2.37CMaternal emotional support scale (M) 103.6, 93.1b 107.7,

1988-1994 change in levels

Change in spanking (M) -.12, -.25b -.09aPercentage whose amount of spanking declined 24a 41b 17cPercentage whose amount of spanking ncreased 24, 18, 44bPercentage whose amount did not change 52, 41b 39b

Change in family income-needs ratio (M) .17a -.05b .16aPercentage who stayed in poverty 23a 35b 10,Percentage who dropped nto poverty 9, 11, 5bPercentage who rose out of poverty 13a 12a 7bPercentage never in poverty 55, 42b 78C

Change in maternal emotional support scale (M) 14.1 15.5 13.6Percentage whose support decreased 23 22 18

Percentage whose support ncreased 47 48 51Percentage whose support stayed constant 30 30 31

Note: Values with unique subscripts are significantly different, p < .001.

by one-way ANOVA (for continuous variables)and contingency table analysis (for categoricalvariables). n 1988, fewer African American hil-dren were "never hit" and more were spankedmore than once a week than European Americanor Hispanic children. Interestingly, whereas Eu-ropean American mothers ncreased heir amountof spanking rom 1988 to 1994 (44% reported nincrease), more African American hildren expe-rienced a decline in spanking over the 6 years(41%), and only 18% experienced an increase.Hispanic children xperienced hange as well, butthe same portion experienced a drop n spankingas experienced an increase 24%).

In addition, n 1988, African Americans had alower family income-needs atio and lower levelsof emotional support han did Hispanics or Eu-ropean Americans. Hispanics had a lower averageincome-needs atio than European Americans, utHispanics were similar o European Americans nlevels of emotional support. Similar patterns arepresent for the average levels estimated from1988-1994. In general, environmental dvantageappears more concentrated among European

American amilies, even though he original am-pling of the NLSY targeted disadvantaged omenof each racial-ethnic roup.

Bivariate Relationships AmongCovariates and Outcomes

Table 2 shows a correlation matrix that relateseach measure examined in the HLM analyses.These comparisons llow one to consider a varietyof relations between covariates sed n these anal-yses. For example, he relation between spankinglevel and emotional support n 1988 was moder-ately negative (r = -.23), whereas the relationbetween income-needs ratio and emotional sup-port in 1988 was moderately positive (r = .29).In general, relations among variables supportthose reported n other studies concerning ovar-

iates of spanking and behavior.

Net Impact of Spanking n Change nBehavior Problems

Table 3 shows the results of the first stage of HLManalyses, examining the impact of spanking on

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