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Relationship Between Parenting Styles and Adult Mental Health

Lindsey Clausen

Wartburg College
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Relationship Between Parenting Styles and Mental Health in Adult Life

Childhood physical punishment is a very common form of discipline and has been since

the 1960s. Physical punishment is used on children between the ages of 3 and 5 more than 80%

of the time in the United States (Ferral, 2010). When used, physical punishment can have effects

on the children well into their adult years and create mental health struggles for the rest of their

lives (Springer, 2007). Learning about this problem can help us understand how to better disci-

pline children as well as how to help those who are dealing with physical punishment currently.

According to the American Society for the Positive Care of Children (SPCC, 2020),

physical punishment is any act that is non accidental and causes physical injury to the child. This

is typically due to unreasonable corporal punishment or unjustifiable punishment. When a person

hits, slaps, shakes, throws, or does anything worse to a child in a physical sense it is physical

punishment. Living with any of these behaviors causes stress and will then lead to stress related

physical and mental effects.

If someone experiences severe childhood punishment, that does not always mean they

will struggle with adjusting to adult life (Kuper and Turanovic, 2020). Many things contribute to

how one may handle the transition into adulthood including family relationships, community

support, and intelligence. Having good attachment levels to family was found to have reduced

the risk of depressive symptoms and low self-esteem in individuals who had experienced physi-

cal punishment (Kuper and Turanovic, 2020). However, because physical punishments like

spanking are shown to reduce the trust between parent and child, it may lead one to believe that

the attachment levels of most children and their parents would be weak. When parents inflict

pain on a child and when it gets to that level where it induces heavy levels of stress, it can be
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considered physical punishment (Gershoff, 2016). This stress can lead to problems for the chil-

dren in an immediate sense, but also in the future.

Receiving physical punishment as a child not only increases the likelihood of experienc-

ing depression in adult women but also increases the chances of having obsessive compulsive

tendencies (Miller, 2006). Childhood physical punishment affects men just as much as it does

women. A longitudinal study found that men who suffered from childhood physical punishment

were more likely to deal with depression, anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, and health issues

later in life (Springer, 2007). Salokangas (2020) found that childhood physical punishment led to

more issues with depression, anxiety, and more psychotic/manic tendencies while emotional

abuse led to more substance abuse problems in men.

The parent-child relationship is very important and may give quite a bit of insight into

why physical child punishment happens. Poor attachment between parents and their children has

been shown to increase the possibility of dysfunctional parenting practices as well as child physi-

cal punishment potential within that relationship (Rodriguez and Tucker, 2011). Parents with

stronger attachment levels to their children have more stable parenting practices and are more

likely to resort to communication rather than physical punishment (Rodriguez and Tucker, 2011).

Other possible causes include substance abuse, anger issues, mental disorders, and just a poor

upbringing for the parent.

Effective coping mechanisms have yet to be discovered for dealing with the effects of

childhood physical punishment. Women who were physically punished reported that they were

less likely to handle adjustments well than women who were not physically punished (Futa et al.,

2003). Most who experience childhood physical punishment tended to not seek out the help they

needed and would rather have kept it from others (Browne, 2002). Keeping experiences bottled
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up can be dangerous for victims because the issues that arise due to their previous traumas will

continue to interfere unless they are properly addressed(Futa et al., 2003). This type of punish-

ment also has the potential to be used as a parenting strategy for the children of the victim in the

future. Coping strategies that have been used for child sexual abuse can also be used for child

physical punishment. Active/social coping has been found to be the only coping strategy that

does not create any other symptoms related to the trauma (Chaffin, 1997). Examples of active

coping is problem solving and seeking out more information. Avoidant coping strategies were

among the most commonly used by children because they took the least amount of work. Some

examples of these include procrastination and rumination. Avoidant coping strategies were found

to be linked to fewer behavioral outbursts but more anxieties. Internalized and angry coping

strategies were found to have mixed results. Internalized strategies resulted in more PTSD and

personal guilt issues with the self while angry coping led to more behavioral problems with au-

thority figures (Chaffin, 1997).

Most research has been done regarding child sexual abuse, but more research is needed

for both physical abuse and emotional abuse. The process from which physical punishment be-

comes physical abuse can also be studied more. Quite a few studies combine physical and sexual

abuse and study both at the same time. Two examples of this occurred in the studies done by

Miller (2006) and Chaffin (1997). Both studied physical and sexual abuse within the same peo-

ple rather than seperate. This is a limitation because child sexual abuse research is typically more

focused on women when men are physically and sexually abused as well. Finding research on

how men have handled childhood physical punishment has been challenging for that reason.

The purpose of the current study was to determine if childhood physical punishment led

to adulthood depression and anxiety. It was also to determine if the severity of the punishment
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had a direct causation to the severity of the depression and anxiety.What is interesting about the

current study is that it helps us learn if receiving physical punishment as a child can result in dis-

orders such as anxiety and depression as an adult, or if the result of it is strictly physical health

problems such as bronchitis, ulcers, and general physical health problems as Springer’s (2009)

research suggests. Learning about the coping mechanisms for the people who experienced physi-

cal punishment can also be beneficial because it allows us to help others currently struggling

with these issues. It was hypothesized that childhood physical punishment does create depression

and anxiety in adulthood as well as other physical health problems too. I also hypothesized that

the severity of the depressive symptoms is most connected to the severity of the punishment they

endured.

Method
Participants
Forty-eight Wartburg College undergraduate students participated in this study either in

exchange for course credit or out of their own free time. There were eighteen males and thirty fe-

males who participated.

Measures
The first part of this study focused on the individuals’ current mental health and consisted

of three self-assessment tests from psycom.

Anxiety

The participants completed the psycom anxiety self assessment questionnaire. This con-

sisted of fifteen questions regarding the individual’s own experience with anxiety symptoms.

Participants answered on a five point scale.

Depression
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Participants completed the psycom depression self assessment questionnaire next. It con-

sisted of ten questions regarding the individual’s experience with depressive symptoms and ten-

dencies. Participants answered on a four point scale.

Low Self Esteem

The last questionnaire completed for the first part of the study was the psycom low self

esteem self assessment. It included eight questions regarding the individual’s views on their cur-

rent self esteem. Participants answered on a five point scale.

Parenting Style

The second part of the survey focused on the participants’ previous childhood experi-

ences that were both positive and negative. The participants filled out the Cornell Parent Behav-

ior Inventory (Johnson et al., 2006). The survey was twenty-six questions long and for each

question the participant needed to substitute mother and father in the blanks and rate the answer

according to a 5 point scale.

Procedure
Participants mainly came from psychology classes at Wartburg College, but all students

were welcome to participate. Students not enrolled in psychology classes were recruited through

word of mouth. All participants used the Sona System website to sign up and select the study.

Credit towards a course requirement was given in exchange for participation for those students

recruited through classes. Those who heard about it through word of mouth participated on a vol-

unteer basis. This study required a minimum sample size of 40 people. Participants first signed

the informed consent document, and began to fill out the three psycom mental health self-assess-

ments. The Cornell Parent Behavior Inventory was filled out. Then, to conclude the study, the

participants were thanked for participating and debriefed properly before they left.
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Results

To determine whether different parenting styles are related to aspects of one’s adult men-

tal health, a series of correlation analyses were computed. Separate Pearson correlation coeffi-

cients were computed to examine the relationship between anxiety, depression, self esteem, and

total mental health scores against parenting styles. There was a weak, negative correlation be-

tween parenting style and anxiety, r(48) = -.03, p = .84. The type of parenting style the partici-

pant was exposed to did not appear to be associated with the participant’s self assessment of anx-

iety experiences. There was also a weak, negative correlation between parenting style and de-

pression, r(48) = -.01, p = .94. The type of parenting style the participant was exposed to did not

seem to be associated with the participant’s self assessment of depressive experiences. There was

a weak, negative correlation between parenting styles and self esteem, r(48) = -.112, p = .45.

The type of parenting style the participant was exposed to did not seem to be associated with the

participant’s self assessment of low self esteem experiences. A weak, negative correlation was

also found between parenting styles and total mental health scores, r(48) = -.05, p = .74. The

type of parenting style the participant was exposed to had no association with the participant’s

overall self assessment of their mental health (see figure 1).

Discussion

The findings were consistent with a longitudinal study that found that severe childhood

punishment types of parenting styles does not always mean the individual will struggle with

adult mental health (Kuper and Turanovic, 2020). Many things contribute to how one may han-

dle adult life after experiencing an authoritarian type of parenting style including family relation-

ships, community support, and intelligence. None of these things were measured in the current
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study. The findings of the current study were not consistent with the predicted hypotheses. It was

hypothesized before the study was conducted that a more authoritarian type of parenting style,

including the use of physical punishment, would increase the likelihood of an individual to strug-

gle with anxiety, depression, and self esteem when in adult life. It was also hypothesized that

those who did not struggle with anxiety, depression, or self esteem would have experiences with

a more authoritative type of parenting style. Neither of these hypotheses were supported as there

was no correlational relationship between the two variables.

The majority of the sample rated themselves somewhere within the middle range for all

three variables (anxiety, depression, and self esteem). Statistical range restriction reduced corre-

lation potential. Most participants also rated themselves somewhere within the middle ground for

what types of parenting styles they experienced. A more diverse sample may have provided bet-

ter results. Coming from a private college and a sample size of 48, it is possible that many of the

participants come from similar types of backgrounds with parenting styles varying only slightly.

A more diverse sample in regards to race, class, and even age may have provided better results.

In future research it would also be beneficial to specifically look at attachment levels between

the participants and their parents/guardians as this may be a better indicator of how parenting

styles affect their mental health. Another thing to consider is that the entire sample came from

the same age group, that being 18 to 22. It is possible that participants weren’t even aware of

their current mental health yet. A more mature sample may have provided better results.
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Figure 1
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