Baumrind_1997

(1)

Necessary Distinctions Author(s): Diana Baumrind

Source: Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1997), pp. 176-182 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1448882 . Accessed: 23/10/2014 11:19

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Psychological Inquiry.

(2)

1997, Vol. 8, No. 3, 176-229 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

COMMENTARIES

Necessary

Distinctions

Diana Baumrind

Institute of Human Development University of California, Berkeley By taking into account the moderating variables of

culture and context, Deater-Deckard and Dodge add depth to the debate concerning the possible effects of harsh physical discipline on children's aggressive behavior. My commentary focuses on the applications of Deater-Deckard and Dodge's first three hypotheses to the controversy surrounding the effects on children of parents' use of disciplinary spanking. I find less con- vincing their fourth hypothesis that the discipline effect is maximized in same-gender parent-child dyads. Ac- cording to Rothbaum and Weisz (1994), for both boys and girls, mothers' quality of caregiving is more closely associated than fathers' with externalizing problem behavior. Furthermore, using data from Zaslow's meta- analysis (1989), Rothbaum and Weisz (whom Deater- Deckard and Dodge cite in another context) reported that the mean effect sizes of the correlations of maternal (rather than paternal) caregiving with externalizing are greater for boys than for girls.

In an earlier contribution to a conference on the consequences of corporal punishment, hosted by the American Academy of Pediatrics, I raised three of the four qualifying hypotheses put forth by Deater-Deckard and Dodge (Baumrind, 1996) to argue against the pro- posal advanced by Hyman (1990) and Straus (1994), among others, to proscribe any use of corporal punishment by parents. I submitted, as do Deater-Deckard and Dodge, that:

1. Associations between harsh discipline and child aggression include a nonlinear component. 2. There are important cultural variations in the

effects on children of corporal punishment. 3. Social contexts within, as well as beyond, the

family influence the meaning to the child of a disciplinary tactic, thus varying its effects. Careful definitions of such key terms as harsh discipline, abuse, corporal punishment, spanking, violence,

and childhood aggression will further advance consideration of the issues raised by Deater-Deckard and Dodge.

Deater-Deckard and Dodge suggest that there is an important nonlinear component in the relation of physical punishment to child aggressive behavior depending on whether the increments are at the high, middle, or low ends of a harsh physical discipline dimension. Presumably "harshness" is defined by the middle level and "abuse" by the high end of a measure of physical discipline. However, it is not clear whether Deater- Deckard and Dodge conceptualize harsh discipline as a dimensional or a categorical construct, because some reports of data from their Child Development Project treat harsh discipline as occurring along a continuum, with abuse at one extreme and harshness at an interme- diate level (e.g., Weiss, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1992), whereas other reports (e.g., Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1996) appear to treat abuse as a categorical construct identified as such by a social service agency or an interviewer. In other analyses (Deater- Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1995), both harshness and physical abuse are first treated as dichotomous risk factors in a multivariate analysis of variance, and then as continuous variables in a hierarchical regression procedure. For at least some analyses (Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 1994), an interviewer's rating of abuse (whether child had been severely harmed) was included to derive a continuous harshness of discipline score. Harshness seems to be operationalized as pertaining only or pri- marily to physical punishment. However, if harsh means unpleasant, stern, or cruel, then the term applies to other than physical discipline, and physical discipline is not necessarily harsh.

I agree with Deater-Deckard and Dodge that there is a strong nonlinear component in the relation of harsh discipline to child aggression. But I suggest that there is a qualitative difference in the pattern of distinguishing attributes that define abuse: Discontinuity on a

(3)

COMMENTARIES single ordinal scale resulting in nonlinearity of a func-

tion points to a qualitative difference but does not define one. Implicit in a nonlinear but not a categorical model is the assumption that at some predictable point, a linear change in a single parameter leads to a discontinuous change in the system, much as increases in speed result in qualitatively different gaits in a horse as it moves from a walk (slow, four-beat gait with feet striking the ground in a specific order) to a trot (legs move in diagonal pairs) to a canter or gallop (three-beat gait). The different gaits are not reducible to the single parameter of speed.

A complex qualitative difference is defined by a pattern of essential distinguishing attributes that differs configurationally on several variables. Thus, authoritative parents are similar to authoritarian parents in that members of both patterns monitor strictly and are highly demanding, but authoritarian parents differ from authoritative parents in that the latter are also highly responsive and communicative (Baumrind, 1971,

1991b). The abusive profile differs qualitatively from other childrearing patterns where parents also have recourse to harsh discipline identified by severity and/or frequency of use of physical punishment (Baum- rind, 1995). Parents who escalate to battering from disciplinary use of corporal punishment intended to correct are likely to share a complex of attributes (Vasta, 1982). Abusive parents are more likely to be hyperre- active to negative stimuli and to have an extreme need to control their children. Their punishment is less contingent on the child's behavior than on their own inner state. Rather than having flexible recourse to a wide range of disciplinary tactics, such as time-out, induc- tion, persuasion, denial of privileges, and use of reason, abusive parents rely monolithically on their greater physical power to intimidate their child into compliance. Their anger is explosive, and they hit in response to their own frustration rather than to correct the child. One would expect therefore, as Deater-Deckard and Dodge assert, that child outcomes associated with a pattern of physical abuse are always detrimental, whereas outcomes associated with patterns that include harsh but not abusive punishment depend on cultural and family contextual factors.

Terms used in the arena of physical discipline should be defined not only for conceptual clarity, but also because proponents of banning corporal punishment in the home as well as in the school have employed rhetorical devices to advance their case on emotional grounds. Thus, Straus's book (1994) on corporal punishment in American families is titled Beating the Devil Out of Them. Hyman (1978, 1990), and Maurer (1974), as well as Straus, employed such rhetorical devices, and

much of the research they cited to support their unquali- fied conclusion that corporal punishment places a child at risk for maladjustment comes from research on physically abused children and suffers from other such seri- ous methodological limitations as oversampling, reli- ance on clinic populations, shared method variance, and failure to use contrast groups or to control for the child's tendency to misbehave (Larzelere, 1996).

The Place of Physical Punishment in the Disciplinary Encounter

Abusive physical punishment consists of beating, kicking, punching, scalding, and otherwise inflicting bodily injury on a child; it falls outside the normative range of socialization practices in most cultures, as well as in the United States. By contrast, spanking consists of striking the child on the buttocks or extremities with an open hand without inflicting physical injury and is normatively used by most parents with young children. Abuse is violent-that is, physical force is exerted in turbulent or furious action so as to injure the child. Spanking is not violent.

Discipline plays an important role, but by no means the most important role, in how optimal parenting pro- duces optimal child outcomes. In middle-class Euro- pean American families, authoritative parenting appears to produce optimal outcomes (Baumrind, 1991a, 1993). Because almost all preschool children in Baum- rind's longitudinal study were spanked, including all but one family classified as authoritative (Baumrind,

1973), to spank or not to spank was irrelevant to successful child outcomes in that study.

By noting what characteristics of punishment are associated with beneficial outcomes, researchers may enable parents to use aversive discipline effectively. Grusec and Goodnow (1994) offered an in-depth ex- ploration of the impact of parental discipline methods, including spanking, on the child's internalization of values. Spanking may trade a brief period of intense distress for longer term guilt and anxiety associated with internalization. Spanking may be used to control the short-term behavior of the child and to reinforce the authority of the parent. How a spanking is administered, especially whether it is used in conjunction with reasoning, largely determines whether the ground rules or metarules that the parents attempt to enforce are internalized.

In his comprehensive review, Larzelere (1996) specified many of the conditions that maximize the beneficial effects of punishment: used less than weekly with young children, and infrequently, if at all, with adolescents; at nonabusive levels of severity by parents

(4)

who are not physically violent against family members; privately in conjunction with reasoning and at an inter- mediate level of child distress. The parenting context in which spanking was associated with beneficial child outcomes in the studies reviewed by Larzelere was child oriented rather than parent oriented, marked by warmth and positive involvement, with consistent follow- through and monitoring, and unaccompanied by natter- ing or ridicule. Larzelere reported that, when prudently used, spanking was associated with more beneficial outcomes than the following disciplinary tactics: reasoning without punishment, punishment without reasoning, love-withdrawal, ignoring physical restraint, and a child-determined rather than parent-determined release from time-out.

The Child's Perception of the Legitimacy of Parental Authority Mediates the Child Effects of Parent

Discipline

As Deater-Deckard and Dodge indicate, the meaning to the child of physical discipline often mediates its effects on such child outcomes as aggression. During the first 6 years, which Dubin and Dubin (1963) referred to as the authority inception period, children's hetero- nomous belief in rules and their unilateral respect for adults extends to acceptance of adult rules and of the reasons parents give children for why and how they enforce these rules. Reasoning, used in conjunction with power-assertive methods of discipline, clarifies the behavioral contingencies for the child, specifying what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. By gen- eralizing from a specific act to a rule governing the larger class of behavior expected of the child, reasoning broadens the context in which compliance is expected, even in the parent's absence. By explaining their disciplinary objectives, parents not only signal that they believe they owe their child an explanation and are doing what they think is right for the child, but also enable their child to control punishment by controlling the behavior on which punishment is contingent.

Physical aggression and oppositional behavior appear to peak around 30 months, with other parent-perceived discipline problems, including oppositional behavior and emotional instability, peaking somewhat later in the preschool years (Larzelere, Amberson, & Martin, 1992). The importance of using reason tojustify caregivers' directives increases with age. The contrasting effects of authority viewed as justified rather than as illegitimate become particularly apparent at adolescence (Kandel & Lesser, 1969; Perry & Perry, 1983). By the time children enter junior high school, they are

more likely to model themselves on parents who legitimate their authority by using reason to justify their decisions and demands (Elder, 1963), especially when children believe that parental authority is motivated by concern for their welfare rather than the adult's desire to dominate or exploit them (Pikas, 1961). Adolescents are most likely to internalize their parent's message when they believe that their parent has followed due process and taken their needs, abilities, and viewpoints into consideration (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994). As children mature into adolescence, they become more protective of their autonomy in areas they regard as personal, but continue to view their parents as having the right to demand conformity in the area of morality and to a lesser extent of social convention (Nucci, 1981; Smetana, 1988).

The Cultural Context Moderates the Meaning to Parents and Children of

Physical Discipline

Parenting behaviors that appear authoritarian in a European American sample may include culturally syn- tonic features that moderate child outcomes in Asian American or African American families (Baumrind,

1972). As Chao (1994) showed, the training concept has important features, beyond the authoritarian model, which contribute to, rather than detract from, the school success of Chinese children. Deater-Deckard and Dodge report that the small association between parents' use of physical discipline and children's externalizing behavior problems is positive and significant for European American children but negative (nonsignifi- cant) for African American children.

Two factors that affect the meaning to the child of a parent's use of physical punishment help to explain Black-White differences in associated child outcomes: (a) physical punishment is more normative in Black than White homes, and (b) its use is associated with different parental attributes. The normative use of physical discipline in African American homes is often justified by parents as necessary to protect children

from physical and social danger, as well as to enforce respect for parental authority. More important, however, in explaining the culturally differentiated child outcomes of harsh physical punishment is the contrasting childrearing contexts in which it occurs. Deater- Deckard and Dodge (1995) and Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, and Pettit (1995) reported that African American mothers are more likely than European American mothers to view physical punishment and reasoning as equally appropriate. For African American mothers who were warm, the correlation between harsh

(5)

COMMENTARIES (not abusive levels of) discipline and child aggression

were low, but for those who were cold, the correlations were similar to those of the European American sample. However, because in this analysis the two ethnic groups were not equated for warmth, the apparent culturally differentiated effect may represent a main effect of warmth rather than an interaction with culture as a modifier.

If the family context in which a disciplinary tactic operates is primary, then warmth should also moderate the relation between parents' harshness and children's externalizing behavior for European American families. Indeed, in previous reports of the same study (Pettit, Bates, & Dodge, 1993), parents' (lack of) warmth contributed to later child aggression over and above harsh discipline for the total sample. Similarly, in a panel study of White families (Simons, Johnson, & Conger, 1994) harsh corporal punishment showed no detrimental impact on adolescent aggressiveness, delin- quency, and dysphoria, once the effect of parental involvement had been removed. Emotional neglect and the absence of parental responsiveness have been found to be more important than coercive disciplinary strate- gies in the etiology of externalizing behaviors (Green- berg, Speltz, & DeKlyen, 1993; Simons, Johnson, & Conger, 1994). Thus, there is reason to think that across cultures, the child effects of spanking are mediated by parental involvement and warmth and moderated by culturally differentiated normative expectations.

Necessary Distinctions Between Prudent and Imprudent Use of

Punishment

Prudent negative consequences are consistent, immediate, calm, private, and specific. Imprudent negative consequences are reprimands delivered late, incon- sistently, explosively, publicly, and nonspecifically. Physical punishment is least likely to be detrimental and most likely to be effective in deterring unacceptable behavior when administered without guilt; under con- trolled circumstances in a measured fashion, where both parent and child are aware of the reason for its use; when administered in private for willful defiance rather than for childish irresponsibility; and not with children younger than 18 months or subsequent to puberty.

In an excellent set of experimental studies in the classroom, a team of investigators (Rosen, O'Leary, Joyce, Conway, & Pfinner, 1984) documented the importance of prudent negative consequences for maintaining the appropriate behavior of hyperactive students. Prudent negative consequences (which did not include paddling), within the context of a positive

teacher-student relationship, were extremely effective in shaping appropriate social and academic behaviors, and were necessary on an ongoing basis to control inappropriate behavior of hyperactive students. Posi- tive consequences did not suffice, and imprudent negative consequences were counterproductive.

Disciplinary spanking in the home, used prudently, can shape socially constructive behavior, thereby pro- tecting children from the natural and more painful consequences of misbehavior occurring outside the nurturant family setting. Parents who strongly disap- prove of the use of physical punishment may resort to it imprudently-that is, impulsively and explosively-rather than deliberately to change a child's behavior (Parke & Collmer, 1975). Corporal punishment used instrumentally is part of an entirely different personality pattern and differs in effect, as well as intent, from corporal punishment used expressively. The chaotic, poor, multiple problem families that Pat- terson and his colleagues study (Patterson, 1982; Pat- terson & Chamberlain, 1988; Snyder & Patterson,

1995) escalate their children's aggression by resorting to explosive, nonstrategic displays of power and nat- tering (i.e., low-intensity negative chatter conveying dislike and disapproval), by failing to track and monitor their children's behavior, and by eventually capitu- lating.

As Deater-Deckard and Dodge claim, there are nonlinear, including curvilinear, associations between frequency or intensity of corporal punishment and child aggression. When no restraining forces exist, hostile aggressive child behaviors that are successful are likely to produce an intensification of child aggressive acts. It appears that the most severely punished children are among the most aggressive, but permissive practices that eschew any kind of power assertion are also associated with higher aggression (Gelles, 1974). In further support of this hypothesis, Lefkowitz and colleagues (Lefkowitz, Eron, Walder, & Huesmann, 1977; Lefkowitz, Heusmann, & Eron, 1978) found that, compared to very harsh or very permissive parents, moder- ately punitive parents produced the least aggressive boys. Physical punishment increased aggression toward peers only in boys who did not identify with their fathers. Sears (1961) also found that the children of moderate users of physical punishment were the least aggressive.

Necessary Distinctions Between Instrumental and Hostile Aggression The emotional, nonstrategic aspects of aggression are more likely than the instrumental aspects to produce

(6)

escalation (Berkowitz, 1993). Pulkkinen (1987) made a similar distinction between offensive and defensive aggression. She found that children who aggress offensively also aggress defensively, but that the converse does not hold. In contrast to children who at age 14 aggressed offensively and then at age 20 were characterized by weak self-control and violent criminal behavior, children who at age 14 aggressed defensively only were not characterized by an aggressive personality pattern and in fact manifested good self-control and school adjustment.

Although high levels of narcissism, especially nar- cissistic personality disorders, have been found to be associated with violence against family members (Dut- ton & Hart, 1992), there is no evidence that a healthy, stable self-regard is associated with violence. There- fore, a distinction should be made between justified self-esteem and egoistic disregard for the legitimate rights of others. McCord (1988) compared the criminal behavior of men who had been raised by punitive parents (i.e., those who used corporal punishment, but were not otherwise aggressive), parents who did not necessarily use corporal punishment but who were aggressive (in that they yelled or threw things when frustrated, or engaged in considerable spousal conflict), and parents who were neither punitive nor aggressive. McCord found that adult children of aggressive parents tended to manifest aggressive antisocial behavior as adults, whereas men reared in homes that were punitive but not aggressive were "egoistic," although not as antisocial as the former group. Egoism was operationalized as expressing pride and pleasure in their own accomplishments and accepting a benefit to which they were entitled ($20 for contributing their time to the experiment). By failing to distinguish between healthy and justified (normal and virtuous) high self-esteem and selfish egoism, McCord concluded inappropriately that exposure to corporal punishment increased egoism, conveying to the child the message that "egocentrism is both normal and virtuous" (p. 21).

An Evolutionary Hypothesis Is Superfluous to an Understanding of

the Differential Effects of a Normative Versus a Non-Normative

Childrearing Environment

The explanation for the observation that children respond more favorably to treatment that they perceive to be normative for their culture can be found in common social-psychological processes, without recourse to an unprovable hypothesized evolutionary determi- nant-that the species has evolved to become resistant

to "minor" environmental irritants. The proximal processes suggested by Deater-Deckard and Dodge suffice. Children more easily accept practices as legitimate that they recognize as common in their immediate community and consonant with their cultural values; parents whose disciplinary practices are extremely aversive, and non-normative even in their own community, are more likely to suffer from pathology resulting in irra- tional or uncontrolled behavior that isolates the family from the larger community and directly harms their children.

If children and their parents believe that disciplinary spanking signifies love and concern, they will respond more positively than if they believe that the practice is socially unacceptable or intended to do them harm. Applying negative social sanctions to the use by parents of physical punishment renders the practice non-normative and delegitimizes its use in the minds of both parents and children, thereby promoting the self-fulfill- ing prophecy that spanking will be associated with family maladjustment. Abusive punishment is more strongly related than mild or even harsh punishment to maladaptive child outcomes, not just because it is outside the normal range, but because abuse is intrinsically cruel, and conveys to the child that one's caregivers are to be feared and hated, rather than trusted and loved.

Requests for Clarification

1. The correlations between harshness of parents' discipline practices with 5-year-old children and teach- ers' ratings of externalizing behavior in Grades K through 6 are all significant but of small effect size, ranging from .17 to .26. Although harshness is distin- guished from abuse in some reported analyses, it is not clear if abusive parents were excluded from these analyses. If we agree that abuse is qualitatively different from harshness on several parameters, then can we agree that abusive caregivers should have been excluded from these analyses?

2. Because warmth and abuse are likely to be nega- tively correlated to a significant degree, the compara- tive correlations between harsh discipline and child aggression for warm Black families compared to the correlations between the same variables for the total sample of White families must have excluded most abusive Black families, but not most abusive White families. Did parent-child warmth also moderate the relation between harsh discipline and child aggression for White families?

3. For Grades K through 6, the sex-differentiated correlations between harsh physical discipline and externalizing problem behavior are reported as ranging

(7)

COMMENTARIES between .18 and .28 for matched-gender parent-child

pairs, and between .05 and .29 for cross-gender parent-child pairs. The differences in magnitude of the two sets of correlations seem small. Are they statistically significant and, if so, large enough to be meaningful, especially in view of the contrary findings presented earlier?

In Summary

Studies cited in Deater-Deckard and Dodge and in this commentary have shown that the consequences for the child of any disciplinary practice normative for a culture are determined by the overall quality of the parent-child relationship and the disciplinary pattern in which the practice is embedded. For reasons given in my reply to Scarr (Baumrind, 1993), the influence of environmental factors within the "average expectable range" is far from trivial. Child outcomes associated with contrasting patterns of parental authority vary in important ways within, not merely outside, the normal range (Baumrind, 1971, 1991a, 1991b). Furthermore, optimal, rather than "good enough," child development is associated with optimal, rather than good enough, parenting styles. The varying child outcomes associated with nonabusive, harsh parenting practices can be ex- plained (without recourse to an evolutionary explanation) by the varying meanings of parenting practices identified as harsh, based on cultural norms, and the differential childrearing styles in which a harsh practice is embedded. Clarification of the conceptual and opera- tional definitions assigned to such key terms as harshness, abuse, and aggression, and tests for the signifi- cance of differences thought to have theoretical import would further advance consideration of the important hypotheses proposed by the authors to explain the complex relations between such discipline practices as spanking, and such child outcomes as aggression, as a function of culture and childrearing context.

Note

Diana Baumrind, Institute of Human Development, Tolman Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94708-1690.

References

Baumrind, D. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority. Devel- opmental Psychology Monograph, 4(1, Pt. 2), 1-103.

Baumrind, D. (1972). An exploratory study of socialization effects on Black children: Some Black-White comparisons. Child De- velopment, 43, 261-267.

Baumrind, D. (1973). The development of instrumental competence through socialization. In A. Pick (Ed.), Minnesota symposia on child psychology (Vol. 7, pp. 3-46). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Baumrind, D. (1991a). The influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance abuse. Journal of Early Adolescence, 11, 56-94.

Baumrind, D. (199lb). Parenting styles and adolescent development. In R. Lerner, A. C. Petersen, & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), The encyclo- pedia on adolescence (pp. 758-772). New York: Garland. Baumrind, D. (1993). The average expectable environment is not

good enough: A response to Scarr. Child Development, 64, 1299-1307.

Baumrind, D. (1995). Child maltreatment and optimal caregiving in social contexts. New York: Garland.

Baumrind, D. (1996). A blanket injunction against disciplinary use of spanking is not warranted by the data. Pediatrics, 98, 828-831.

Berkowitz, L. (1993). Aggression: Its causes, consequences, and control. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Chao, R. K. (1994). Beyond parental control and authoritarian parenting style: Understanding Chinese parenting through the cultural notion of training. Child Development, 65, 1111-1119. Deater-Deckard, K. D., & Dodge, K. A. (1995). Externalizing behav-

ior problems and discipline revisited: Nonlinear effects and variation by culture, context, and gender. Unpublished manu- script, Institute of Psychiatry, London.

Deater-Deckard, K. D., Dodge, K. A., Bates, J. E., & Pettit, G. S. (1995, March). Riskfactorsfor the development of externalizing behavior problems: Are there ethnic group differences in process? Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Indianapolis, IN.

Deater-Deckard, K. D., Dodge, K. A., Bates, J. E., & Pettit, G. S. (1996). Physical discipline among African American and Euro- pean American mothers: Links to children's externalizing behaviors. Developmental Psychology, 32, 1065-1072.

Dodge, K. A., Pettit, G. S., & Bates, J. E. (1994). Socialization mediators of the relation between socioeconomic status and child conduct problems. Child Development, 65, 649-665. Dubin, E. R., & Dubin, R. (1963). The authority inception period in

socialization. Child Development, 34, 885-898.

Dutton, D. G., & Hart, S. D. (1992). Risk markers for family violence in a federally incarcerated population. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 15, 101-112.

Elder, G. H., Jr. (1963). Parental power legitimization and its effect on the adolescent. Sociometry, 25, 50-65.

Gelles, R. J. (1974). The violent home: A study of physical aggression between husbands and wives. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Greenberg, M. T., Speltz, M. L., & DeKlyen, M. (1993). The role of

attachment in early development of disruptive behavior problems. Development and Psychopathology, 5, 191-213. Grusec, J. E., & Goodnow, J. J. (1994). Impact of parental discipline

methods on the child's internalization of values: A reconceptu- alization of current points of view. Developmental Psychology, 30, 4-19.

Hyman, I. A. (1978). Psychological correlates of corporal punishment. In M. R. Brassard, R. Germain, & S. N. Hart (Eds.), Psychological maltreatment of children and youth (pp. 59-68). New York: Pergamon.

Hyman, I. A. (1990). Reading, writing and the hickory stick: The appalling story of physical and psychological abuse in Ameri- can schools. Lexington, MA: Heath.

Kandel, D., & Lesser, G. S. (1969). Parent-adolescent relationships and adolescent independence in the United States and Denmark. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 31, 348-358.

(8)

Larzelere, R. (1996). A review of the outcomes of parental use of nonabusive or customary physical punishment. Pediatrics, 98, 824-828.

Larzelere, R. E., Amberson, T. G., & Martin, J. A. (1992). Age differences in perceived discipline problems from 9 months to 48 months. Family Relations, 41, 192-199.

Lefkowitz, M., Eron, L., Walder, L., & Huesmann, L. (1977). Grow- ing up to be violent: A longitudinal study of the development of aggression. New York: Pergamon.

Lefkowitz, M. M., Heusmann, L. R., & Eron, L. D. (1978). Corporal punishment: A longitudinal analysis of effects. Archives of General Psychiatry, 35, 186-191.

Maurer, A. (1974). Corporal punishment. American Psychologist, 29, 614-626.

McCord, J. (1988). Parental behavior in the cycle of aggression. Psychiatry, 51, 14-23.

Nucci, L. (1981). The development of personal concepts: A domain distinct from moral or societal concepts. Child Development, 52, 114-121.

Parke, R. D., & Collmer, C. (1975). Child abuse: An interdisciplinary analysis. In E. M. Hetherington (Ed.), Review of child development research (Vol. 5, pp. 509-590). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Patterson, G. R. (1982). A social learning approach to family interven- tion: Coercive family process (Vol. 3). Eugene, OR: Castalia. Patterson, G. R., & Chamberlain, P. (1988). Treatment process: A

problem at three levels. In L. C. Wynne (Ed.), The state of the art infamily therapy research: Controversies and recommenda- tions (pp. 189-223). New York: Family Process Press.

Perry, D. G., & Perry, L. C. (1983). Social learning, causal attribution, and moral internalization. In J. Bisanz, G. L. Bisanz, & R. V. Kail, Jr. (Eds.), Learning in children: Progress in cognitive development research (pp. 105-136). New York: Springer-Verlag. Pettit, G. S., Bates, J. E., & Dodge, K. A. (1993). Family interaction

patterns and children's conduct problems at home and school: A longitudinal perspective. School Psychology Review, 22, 401-418.

Pikas, A. (1961). Children's attitudes toward rational versus inhibit- ing parental authority. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 62, 315-321.

Pulkkinen, L. (1987). Offensive and defensive aggression in humans: A longitudinal perspective. Aggressive Behavior, 13, 197-212. Rosen, L. A., O'Leary, S. G., Joyce, S. A., Conway, G., & Pfinner,

L. J. (1984). The importance of prudent negative consequences for maintaining the appropriate behavior of hyperactive students. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 12, 581-604. Rothbaum, F., & Weisz, J. R. (1994). Parental caregiving and child

externalizing behavior in nonclinical samples: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 55-74.

Sears, R. (1961). Relation of early socialization experiences to aggression in middle childhood. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 466-492.

Simons, R. L., Johnson, C., & Conger, R. D. (1994). Harsh corporal punishment versus quality of parental involvement as an explanation of adolescent maladjustment. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 56, 591-607.

Smetana, J. (1988). Adolescents' and parents' conceptions of parental authority. Child Development, 59, 321-335.

Snyder, J. J., & Patterson, G. R. (1995). Individual differences in social aggression: A test of a reinforcement model of socialization in the natural environment. Behavioral Therapy, 26, 371-391.

Straus, M. A. (1994). Beating the devil out of them: Corporal punishment in American families. Lexington, MA: Lex- ington/Macmillian.

Vasta, R. (1982). Physical child abuse: A dual-component analysis. Developmental Review, 2, 125-149.

Weiss, B., Dodge, K. A., Bates, J. E., & Pettit, G. S. (1992). Some consequences of early harsh discipline: Child aggression and a maladaptive social information processing style. Child Devel- opment, 63, 1321-1335.

Zaslow, M. J. (1989). Sex differences in children's response to parental divorce: Samples, variables, ages and sources. Ameri- can Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 59, 118-141.

Variation

in Susceptibility

to Environmental

Influence:

An Evolutionary

Argument

Jay Belsky

Human Development and Family Studies Pennsylvania State University The major finding, and indeed principal take-home

message of the Deater-Decker and Dodge target arti- cle-that the effects of parental behavior on children's development may vary as a function of race, gender, and severity of "dysfunctional" parenting-is especially important from the perspective of the ecology of child development. Although Deater-Deckard and Dodge are among the first to document differential effects of parenting depending on whether families are White or Black and whether parents are extremely coercive, they are not the first to suggest that the kinds

of findings they have generated might be expected and thus should be empirically pursued. Bronfenbrenner and Crouter's (1983) person-process-context model of development specifically addresses the prospect that processes of development may operate differently in different ecological niches, as well as the fact that different individuals may be differentially affected by the same rearing experiences; this latter point, which is considered only with respect to race and gender in the Deater-Deckard and Dodge presentation, will be central to arguments advanced in this commentary.