Sex differences in the reciprocal relationships between mild and severe corporal punishment and children's internalizing problem behavior in a Chinese sample
Highlights
► The study examined sex differences in the reciprocal relations between corporal punishment and child internalizing behavior. ► Both mild and severe corporal punishment predicted girls' internalizing behavior. ► Severe corporal punishment marginally predicted boys' internalizing behavior.► Boys' internalizing behavior predicted mild and severe corporal punishment.
Section snippets
Samples
The children in this study were participants from an ongoing longitudinal study of parental discipline and child adjustment (Xing et al., 2011). Four hundred and eighty-six Grade 3 through Grade 5 children (241 boys; 245 girls) were recruited from one public elementary school located in an eastern Chinese city. We chose to study this group for two reasons. First, it has been found that discipline techniques change with the age of the child and the reciprocal relationships between corporal
Preliminary analyses
Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for parental corporal punishment subscale scores and child internalizing problem behavior subscale scores at two assessments for the full sample and subsamples. Bivariate correlations among these scores are provided separately by child sex in Table 2. For both boys and girls, associations between parental corporal punishment and child internalizing problem behavior were positive, with more corporal punishment at both time points associated with more
Discussion
The goal of this study was to examine the sex differences in the reciprocal relationships between parental mild or severe corporal punishment and child internalizing problem behavior in a Chinese community sample of elementary school-age children. Contrary to our initial expectations, the reciprocal relations were not found for the full samples of boys and girls. Although both parental mild and severe corporal punishment influenced children's internalizing problem behavior, the reverse was not
Acknowledgment
This research was supported by Humanistic and Social Science Project of Ministry of Education in China (Project No. 11YJA190017) and Key Subject Funds of Shandong Province, PR China (2011-2015). We are grateful to all the children, parents, and teachers who participated or contributed to this project.
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2018, Child Abuse and NeglectCitation Excerpt :In the current sample, the Cronbach’s alphas for the perceived normativeness of psychological aggression and corporal punishment were 0.73 and 0.81, respectively. The Chinese version of the Youth Self-Report measure (YSR; Achenbach, 1991; Xing, Wang, Zhang, He, & Zhang, 2011; Xing & Wang, 2013) was used to obtain the adolescents’ reports on their own externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors. The YSR externalizing behavior scale consists of two subscales: aggressive behavior (19 items, e.g., “I physically attack people”) and delinquent behavior (11 items, e.g., “I steal at home”).