3

PARENTING AND CHILD

DISCIPLINE
Jennifer E. Lansford

Introduction
Parents are tasked with many responsibilities in rearing their children to be competent, well-
functioning members of society. These responsibilities include providing for children’s physical needs
and protecting them from harm, as well as providing for socioemotional and cognitive needs by offer-
ing love and stimulation. One of the most important ways that parents shape their children’s behavior
is through the use of proactive discipline to encourage desired behavior in the future and reactive
discipline to respond to misbehavior after it occurs. This chapter focuses on parents’ use of discipline
to socialize desired child behaviors.
The chapter begins by situating the study of parenting and child discipline in historical context
and then presents central issues in this area of research. The chapter next turns to major theories that
have guided our understanding of discipline. The bulk of the chapter then reviews research on pre-
dictors of different forms of discipline, child outcomes associated with different forms of discipline,
how discipline is situated within the overall climate of the parent–child relationship, and moderators
and mediators of links between parental discipline and child outcomes. Then the chapter reviews
practical information including interventions, laws, and policies that have attempted to alter parents’
discipline. Finally, the chapter offers suggestions for future theoretical and research directions as well
as concluding comments.

Historical Considerations in the Study of Parental Discipline

The study of parental discipline has a long history within the field of psychology. Early psychologi-
cal writings on parental discipline stemmed from the theoretical tenets of behaviorism. For example,
Watson, the father of behaviorism, provided childrearing advice that emphasized how parents should
structure their children’s daily routines in ways to prevent misbehavior and to minimize punishment
(Watson and Watson, 1928). Many ideas about parents’ use of rewards and punishments to shape chil-
dren’s behavior likewise stem from behaviorism (e.g., Skinner, 1938).
Parents’ use of different forms of discipline has been subject to scientific inquiry at least since the
publication of Sears, Maccoby, and Levin’s (1957) Patterns of Childrearing. This book detailed disci-
pline techniques used by European-American parents in the Boston area in the 1950s, including
why parents used particular discipline strategies and how discipline is related to children’s behavior.
Prior to this study, researchers generally hypothesized that more parental control would be associated

65
 Jennifer E. Lansford

with better child behavior, but the Sears et al. study demonstrated the opposite. This early research
set the stage for subsequent research that has now tested relations between different types of parental
discipline and different aspects of child development, using increasingly complex conceptual models,
increasingly diverse samples, and increasingly sophisticated analyses that incorporate mediators and
moderators of links between discipline and child outcomes.

Central Issues in Understanding Parental Discipline

Distinguishing different forms of parental discipline and methodological approaches that have been
used to study parental discipline are central issues in the understanding of parental discipline.

Different Forms of Parental Discipline

Parental discipline can be broadly categorized as being either reactive, responding to misbehavior that
has occurred already, or proactive, focusing on preventing misbehavior from occurring in the future.
An overarching framework for understanding a wide range of specific forms of discipline includes
three main categories of discipline (Hoffman and Saltzstein, 1967): power assertion (which involves
parents’ exertion of power and authority over the child), love withdrawal (which involves parents’
manipulation of children’s negative emotions, often through expressing anger or disapproval), and
inductive reasoning (which involves discussing how other people are affected by children’s behaviors).
Of these three categories, inductive reasoning has been found to be the most optimal type of
discipline, predicting more positive child outcomes than either power assertion or love withdrawal
(Hoffman and Saltzstein, 1967). Inductive reasoning helps children to understand how their actions
affect other people and provides explanations about why certain behaviors are wrong or right. Thus,
inductive reasoning is proactive in trying to affect children’s future behavior rather than merely reac-
tive in punishing children’s past misbehavior; indeed, moral development, empathy, and perspective
taking are all enhanced by the use of inductive reasoning (Hoffman, 1977). Furthermore, mothers at
high risk for physically abusing their children use less inductive reasoning, more verbal and physical
power assertion, and evaluate power assertion as being more appropriate than do mothers at low risk
for physically abusing their children (Chilamkurti and Milner, 1993).
In contrast to the widely accepted benefits of discipline involving inductive reasoning, power-
assertive discipline has been more controversial and encompasses a range of specific forms of disci-
pline that may vary in effectiveness. Baumrind (2012) distinguishes between coercive and confrontive
forms of power assertion. Parents use coercive discipline in a domineering and arbitrary way to
establish their authority. By contrast, parents use confrontive discipline in a negotiable way to bring
about particular child behaviors rather than merely establishing parental authority. Although coercive
discipline is related to negative child outcomes, confrontive discipline might help children to regulate
their behavior constructively.
Within the overarching categories of power assertion, love withdrawal, and inductive reasoning,
parents use a number of specific forms of discipline, such as removing privileges, rewarding desired
behaviors, implementing time-outs, and spanking, to name a few. Monitoring children’s behavior,
talking with children, using distraction, and modeling desired behaviors were the most common dis-
cipline strategies in a longitudinal study of U.S. parents’ use of ten different forms of discipline with
preschoolers; corporal punishment was one of the three least common strategies with preschoolers
(Socolar, Savage, and Evans, 2007), who are more likely to be corporally punished than either younger
or older children (Straus and Stewart, 1999). In other countries, parents show similar patterns of use
of different forms of discipline. In a study of mothers’ reports of discipline experienced by their
2- to 4-year-old children in 24 low- and middle-income countries, the most common type of disci-
pline was explaining why something was wrong, with 80% of mothers reporting that someone had

66
 Parenting and Child Discipline

explained to their child why something was wrong in the last month (Lansford and Deater-Deckard,
2012). Across the 24 countries, 63% of mothers reported that their child had experienced corporal
punishment in the last month (Lansford and Deater-Deckard, 2012). Thus, although it is reassuring
that the most commonly reported form of discipline is inductive reasoning, 20% of 2- to 4-year-olds
across the 24 countries did not receive explanations in the last month of why something was wrong.
Furthermore, although reasoning was more common than corporal punishment, the majority of chil-
dren, across countries, still experienced corporal punishment in the last month.
Some types of discipline appear to be common in particular cultural groups but not others. For
example, Chinese parents use a form of discipline Fung (1999) described as “shaming” to teach chil-
dren right from wrong. Parents of 2- to 4-year-olds in an ethnographic study used both verbal and
nonverbal interactions with their children to instill shame after misbehavior, with the goal of teaching
children moral behavior and socializing them to “confess and repent” after wrongdoing (Fung, 1999,
p. 201). However, in a sample of children ages 7 to 14 in China and Canada, although shaming was
perceived as being more common in China, with age, children in both countries increasingly per-
ceived shaming as being detrimental to children’s self-worth and psychological well-being (Helwig,
To, Wang, Liu, and Yang, 2014). Children in China and Canada evaluated inductive reasoning more
favorably than shaming or love withdrawal.
Parents do not use just a single form of discipline but instead vary their responses depending on
the child’s misbehavior and contextual features of the situation. In open-ended, in-depth responses to
hypothetical vignettes depicting common child behavior problems, mothers in Hong Kong and Tai-
wan were found to consider a wide range of disciplinary responses (Fung, Li, and Lam, 2017). Mothers
endorsed different forms of discipline depending on the setting in which the misbehavior occurred
(at home versus in public), who was present at the time (immediate family members versus strangers
versus an acquaintance), which rules or conventions were violated (safety, health, social-conventional,
or moral), possible outcomes (e.g., harm to self, inappropriate behavior), and how much conflict was
involved. Furthermore, depending on contextual features of the misbehavior and situation, moth-
ers endorsed a single disciplinary strategy, simultaneous strategies with multiple forms of discipline,
contingent strategies with a particular response dependent on factors related to the child or situation,
or ratcheting up when the mothers’ first strategy failed so mothers reported they would be more
encouraging or harsher in a subsequent attempt (Fung et al., 2017). Thus, parents use a number of
types of discipline, which may depend on families’ cultural context and features of situations in which
children misbehave.
To summarize, effective discipline is characterized by being proactive rather than reactive, using
reasoning to help children understand the effects of their actions on other people, and avoiding cor-
poral punishment. Particular forms of discipline are more common in some countries than others,
although reasoning is generally used more frequently than corporal punishment across countries.
Parents do not use just one form of discipline but rely on a number of different strategies used simul-
taneously or sequentially.

Methods of Study of Parental Discipline

Parental discipline is usually assessed via self-reports of the frequency with which parents have used
particular types of discipline in the last month, 6 months, or year. Commonly used measures include
the Parent–child Conflict Tactics Scale (Straus, Hamby, Finkelhor, Moore, and Runyan, 1998), the
Dimensions of Discipline Inventory (Straus and Fauchier, 2011), and the Discipline Interview (Huang
et al., 2012; Lansford et al., 2005). An advantage of self-report measures is that it is possible to ask
about a range of low-frequency behaviors that would be difficult to witness or that are unlikely
to occur during naturalistic or laboratory-based observations. A disadvantage, however, is that self-
reports are subject to imperfect recall and social desirability biases, with the potential for parents to

67
 Jennifer E. Lansford

underreport behaviors they perceive as being socially undesirable or overreport behaviors they believe
would be self-enhancing (Morsbach and Prinz, 2006). To overcome these limitations, social desir-
ability biases are sometimes statistically controlled in analyses (Bornstein et al., 2015). In addition,
triangulating responses from multiple respondents (mother, father, and child) can provide different
perspectives on whether and how often parents have used particular kinds of discipline.
As a variation on self-report measures in which parents report on their actual behavior, propensity
to use particular kinds of discipline is also sometimes assessed using analog methods, such as presenting
parents with images, videos, or text depicting hypothetical vignettes involving a child’s misbehavior
and asking parents what they would do to respond to each situation (e.g., Russa and Rodriguez,
2010). Responses can involve either closed-ended options for parents to select or open-ended ques-
tions that are then coded into categories, such as corporal punishment, manipulation of privileges, or
inductive reasoning (Bombi, Di Norcia, Di Giunta, Pastorelli, and Lansford, 2015; Pettit, Bates, and
Dodge, 1997). An advantage of using hypothetical vignettes is that the type of misbehavior, setting,
and other situational factors can be manipulated to examine whether parents’ reported disciplinary
responses vary by these factors (Fung et al., 2017). A disadvantage of using hypothetical vignettes is
that parents are not being asked whether and how often they use particular forms of discipline with
their own child.
More rarely, parents are observed interacting with their children, and discipline encounters dur-
ing the interactions are recorded and coded. An advantage of observations is that they can be coded
by objective researchers to avoid social desirability biases that can be associated with self-reports.
Disadvantages of observations are that they are time consuming and expensive to conduct, and low-
frequency forms of discipline may not be observed, even if they are salient to the parent–child rela-
tionship when they do occur. In a study in which audio recorders were worn by mothers of 2- to
5-year-old children for up to six nights, instances of corporal punishment were heard in almost half
of the families (Holden, Williamson, and Holland, 2014). After 73% of the instances of corporal
punishment, children were misbehaving again within ten minutes. The audio-recorded instances and
self-reported instances of corporal punishment corresponded in 81% of the cases.
Discipline can also be studied in the context of experiments. For example, boys with conduct dis-
order were paired either with mothers of conduct-disordered sons or with mothers of sons without
conduct disorder. These boy–mother dyads were then observed engaging in three laboratory tasks;
each mother completed the tasks with her own son and with two other boys. Mothers who were
interacting with boys with conduct disorder were found to behave more negatively, whereas mothers
interacting with boys without conduct disorder were found to behave more positively (Anderson,
Lytton, and Romney, 1986). Boys with conduct disorder were found to be more noncompliant and
to elicit more negative responses from both their own and other mothers, providing evidence for the
importance of child effects in shaping the kinds of discipline they experience. Other experiments
demonstrate that changes in parenting predict changes in children’s aggression (Patterson, Dishion,
and Chamberlain, 1993) and that parents’ management strategies can be experimentally manipulated
(Webster-Stratton, 1990).
Finally, intervention studies offer an additional method for studying parental discipline. For exam-
ple, families who were randomized to an intervention that improved positive parenting practices
reduced young children’s behavior problems, whereas children’s behavior problems did not change
in the families randomized to a control group (Dishion et al., 2008). In a different intervention
designed to improve outcomes for children following their parents’ divorce, mothers who were
randomized to the intervention rather than control group were found to improve in their use of
positive discipline strategies, which, in turn, decreased children’s externalizing behavior problems
(Tein, Sandler, MacKinnon, and Wolchik, 2004). Because laboratory experiments and randomized
interventions manipulate exposure to different types of experiences, both methods offer the potential
for rigorous testing of links between different forms of discipline and children’s behavior.

68
 Parenting and Child Discipline

Primary methods of studying parental discipline include self-reports, analog measures such as
asking parents how they would respond to hypothetical vignettes, parent–child observations, experi-
ments, and intervention studies. Each method has benefits and drawbacks that must be weighed when
determining which approach to use for any given study. Converging evidence from several methods
contributes to scientific rigor and increased confidence in findings, beyond what any method could
do alone.

Theory in Parental Discipline

Theories relevant to understanding parental discipline take a variety of forms, including distinguish-
ing between parenting practices and parenting styles, delineating the role of parents’ and children’s
emotions in discipline situations, and describing how observing and modeling others’ behavior affects
parents’ and children’s behavior. Theories related to parental discipline differentiate parenting prac-
tices and parenting styles, referring to what parents do and how they do it, respectively. Many classic
parenting theories describe parenting practices and styles in relation to dimensions that are broadly
construed in terms of what parents do to control children’s behavior (most relevant to discipline) and
the overall emotional climate of the parent–child relationship (which can affect how children receive
and respond to discipline; see Rudolph, Lansford, and Rodkin, 2017). These theories have character-
ized major dimensions of parenting in terms of dominance versus submission and rejection versus
acceptance (Symonds, 1939), hostility versus warmth and involvement versus detachment (Baldwin,
1955), strictness versus permissiveness and warmth (Sears et al., 1957), hostility versus love and control
versus autonomy (Schaefer, 1959), and hostility versus warmth and permissiveness versus restrictive-
ness (Becker, 1964). All of these theories emphasize that parenting involves both behavioral (e.g.,
control, restrictiveness, permissiveness) and emotional (e.g., warmth, acceptance, hostility, rejection)
dimensions (see Darling and Steinberg, 1993).
As characterized well in Baumrind’s (1967) framework, behavioral and emotional dimensions of
parenting may operate somewhat independently. Baumrind’s theoretical model described three types
of parents: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. Authoritarian parents are high on the control
dimension but low on the warmth dimension. Permissive parents are low on the control dimension
but high on the warmth dimension. Authoritative parents are high on both the control and warmth
dimensions. However, unlike authoritarian parents who expect children to follow their directives
without question, authoritative parents provide more explanations and opportunities for children to
voice their opinions. Children whose parents are authoritative have been found to be more socially
competent and higher achieving academically than children whose parents are authoritarian or per-
missive (Baumrind, 1971). Others have theorized that it is not high levels of control but rather chil-
dren’s freedom to negotiate rules and communicate openly with their parents in authoritative families
that contributes to children’s social and academic competence (Lewis, 1981).
Maccoby and Martin’s (1983) theory of parenting built on Baumrind’s theory by conceptualizing
parenting within a two-by-two matrix characterized by high versus low demandingness, control,
and supervision on one axis and responsiveness, warmth, and acceptance on the other. As in Baum-
rind’s theory, authoritative parents were high on both dimensions, whereas authoritarian parents
were high on demandingness but low on responsiveness. Whereas in Baumrind’s theory, permissive
parents were characterized just by being low on demandingness (regardless of their responsiveness),
in Maccoby and Martin’s theory, neglecting parents were low in both demandingness and respon-
siveness, but indulgent parents were low on demandingness but high on responsiveness. Baumrind
(1991) subsequently revised her theory to add a rejecting-neglecting parenting style characterized by
low demandingness and responsiveness and to differentiate demandingness of authoritarian parents
(which is highly restrictive) versus authoritative parents (which is not highly restrictive yet still exerts
firm control).

69
 Jennifer E. Lansford

Dix (1991) proposed a theoretical model of how emotions can either undermine parenting or
promote sensitive, responsive parenting depending on whether emotions are too strong, too weak, or
inappropriate for a given situation. This emotion-focused model of parenting describes three pro-
cesses: activation, engagement, and regulation. Activation refers to which emotion is experienced, as
well as when and how strongly the emotion is experienced. Engagement refers to how individuals
orient to events in ways that are consistent with their emotions and affects how they respond to events
cognitively, physiologically, and behaviorally. Regulation refers to how individuals express, understand,
and control their emotions. Emotions in parent–child interactions often depend on whether parents’
short-term (e.g., get the child’s teeth brushed) and long-term (e.g., promote the development of
morality) goals are being thwarted or advanced. Emotions in parent–child interactions are generally
more positive when parents’ and children’s goals and behaviors are aligned than when they are diver-
gent. When parents’ and children’s goals and behaviors diverge, parents can respond with cooperative
strategies (e.g., reasoning, negotiating), empathic strategies (e.g., going along with children’s wishes),
or forceful strategies (e.g., imposing the parent’s will through physical force). Children are more likely
to resist forceful strategies because they do not take children’s perspectives and desires into account, so
use of force may undermine parents’ future attempts to gain children’s compliance.
According to Dix’s model, parents’ perceptions of the stability, controllability, and importance of
events determine the strength of the emotion induced. If parents experience emotions too strongly,
they may react too harshly or intrusively, whereas if parents do not experience emotions strongly
enough, they may not engage or respond to children sufficiently. It is important for parents to be
able to regulate their emotions so that they appropriately match them to parenting situations and do
not display emotions that are counterproductive. Parents are most likely to respond empathically to
children when parents’ own concerns induce weaker emotions than children’s concerns. Understood
in this emotion-focused framework, one reason that corporal punishment and other forms of harsh
discipline may be ineffective is that harsh discipline induces negative emotions in children and parents,
which undermines parents’ socialization attempts. Children will be less open to parents’ socialization
attempts in the face of negative emotions, and such emotions can also shift attention and processing
away from the parents’ message. This focus on children’s willing compliance is also a hallmark of
Grusec, Danyliuk, Kil, and O’Neill’s (2017) conceptual model of discipline, which delineates how par-
ents can use consistency, autonomy support, perspective taking, and parental acceptance of the child
in discipline situations to facilitate children’s openness to parents’ socialization attempts. Together
these models suggest that parents are most successful at fostering children’s moral development when
they offer explanations and reason with children about the merits of particular behaviors and when
the affective context of the parent–child relationship facilitates children’s motivation to attend and
respond to parents (Smetana, 1999).
As in Dix’s model, emotion plays a central role in the emotional security hypothesis proposed by
Davies and Cummings (1994), which incorporates two clusters of parenting problems: poor child
behavior management and parental rejection. Poor child behavior management can be either because
parents’ supervision and discipline are too lax or because discipline is too harsh, both of which are
related to more child externalizing and internalizing problems. Parental rejection can encompass
negative emotions, intrusiveness, and withdrawal, all of which are related to children’s own anger,
dysphoria, withdrawal, and noncompliance. Poor child behavior management and parental rejection
can both compromise children’s emotional security and capacity to regulate their own emotions
and, in turn, problematic behaviors that might stem from negative emotions. Thus, in Davies and
Cummings’s model, the association between parenting and child outcomes is mediated by children’s
emotional security.
Parental rejection also plays a central role in Rohner’s (2004) interpersonal acceptance-rejection
theory, which argues that children’s adjustment is determined largely by whether children perceive
their parents as being accepting or rejecting of them. The theory has been supported empirically in

70
 Parenting and Child Discipline

a large number of studies in many countries (e.g., Khaleque and Rohner, 2002; Rohner and Lansford,
2017). Consistent with the theory, corporal punishment is related to child adjustment in part through
children’s perceptions of their parents’ rejection (Rohner, Kean, and Cournoyer, 1991). The link
between children’s perceptions of the justness and harshness of their parents’ use of corporal punish-
ment and children’s psychological adjustment was mediated by children’s perceptions of their parents’
rejection versus acceptance (Rohner, Bourque, and Elordi, 1996). Thus, interpersonal acceptance-
rejection theory emphasizes that parents’ specific discipline behaviors are related to child outcomes in
part because of the messages parents’ behaviors convey about love and acceptance of the child, on the
one hand, versus rejection and hostility, on the other.
Coercion theory is a useful framework that helps account for the development of externalizing
behavior problems (Patterson, Capaldi, and Bank, 1991). In bidirectional coercive cycles, children’s
aversive behaviors, such as whining, yelling, and hitting, are reinforced by parents’ withdrawal of
discipline, and parents’ ineffective discipline, such as yelling or hitting, is reinforced when children
temporarily stop behaving aversively. A prototypical example would be if a child asks for candy at the
store, the parent says no, the child repeats the request more forcefully, the parent says no more firmly,
the child throws a temper tantrum, and the parent gives in and buys the candy to avoid a scene or the
parent smacks the child so the child stops making the request. In either scenario, aversive behavior
has been reinforced (the child’s temper tantrum in the former or the parent’s use of corporal punish-
ment in the latter). Over time, these coercive cycles escalate and generalize to other contexts such as
peer relationships as children learn that they can get what they want through aggressive and antisocial
behaviors (Dishion, 2014).
Social learning theories also help account for links between parents’ use of corporal punishment
and the development of children’s aggressive behavior problems. That is, as children observe their
parents using aggression to handle interpersonal problems, they may imitate and model their own
behaviors on their parents’ behavior over time (Bandura, 2016). Likewise, children develop norma-
tive beliefs about aggression through their experiences in parent–child relationships (Huesmann and
Guerra, 1997). If parents use corporal punishment, children are more likely to perceive aggression as
a legitimate and acceptable way to treat others, and they are deprived of opportunities to learn non-
violent ways of dealing with interpersonal conflicts.
Normativeness theory has been proposed as a way of accounting for how and why child behaviors
associated with particular forms of discipline might differ depending on the broader cultural context
in which families live (Deater-Deckard and Dodge, 1997). A hypothesis derived from normative-
ness theory is that if parents use a form of discipline that is accepted and common in their cultural
context (i.e., normative), then it will be related to more positive (or less negative) child outcomes
than if parents use a form of discipline that is not normative in their cultural context (Lansford et al.,
2005). If children perceive that their parents are behaving in a way that is consistent with the way
other parents are behaving, then they may be more likely to regard their parents’ discipline as being
acceptable. Children’s perceptions of the fairness and reasonableness of discipline are associated with
its effectiveness (Grusec and Goodnow, 1994). Children are more likely to internalize parents’ social-
ization messages if they believe that their parents are behaving in an appropriate way. In addition, if
parents perceive that they are behaving in a normative way, they may use a given form of discipline in
a more planned and consistent rather than impulsive and unregulated way, which in turn would be less
likely to make children anxious and fearful (Holden, Miller, and Harris, 1999; Straus and Mouradian,
1998). However, a caveat exists suggesting that an extreme position on cultural relativism should not
be adopted. For example, in societies where corporal punishment is more normative, other forms of
violence and aggression are also more normative (Lansford and Dodge, 2008). This suggests that even
if at an individual level, corporal punishment is not as strongly related to worse child outcomes in
societies in which it is normative as in which it is non-normative, at a societal level, corporal punish-
ment is related to higher levels of aggression in the population as a whole (Lansford and Dodge, 2008).

71
 Jennifer E. Lansford

To summarize, theories relevant to understanding parental discipline often incorporate elements

of parenting practices (what parents do in discipline situations) as well as parenting styles (the overall
emotional climate of the parent–child relationship); parenting styles can affect how children interpret
parents’ behaviors. Parenting practices often correspond to the control dimension and parenting styles
to the warmth dimension of classic parenting theories. Many theoretical models give prominent
placement to the role of parents’ and children’s emotions. Social learning frameworks and normative-
ness theory emphasize how observing others’ behavior affects what one perceives as being acceptable
and desirable for one’s own behavior.

Classical and Modern Research in Parental Discipline

This section provides an overview of classical and modern research in parental discipline by reviewing
predictors of different forms of discipline, consequences of different forms of discipline, how disci-
pline is situated in the broader context of parent–child relationships, and moderators and mediators of
links between parental discipline and child outcomes.

Predictors of Discipline
Parents’ use of particular forms of discipline is predicted by a range of individual- and community-
level factors, such as family stress (Whipple and Webster-Stratton, 1991), poverty (Knutson, DeGarmo,
Koeppl, and Reid, 2005), and parents’ negative attributions regarding children’s behaviors (Berlin,
Dodge, and Reznick, 2013). In a longitudinal study of parents in nine countries, variance in parents’
use of corporal punishment was predicted by both individual-level (e.g., child externalizing behaviors)
and community-level (e.g., norms about corporal punishment) factors (Lansford et al., 2015). Like-
wise, other forms of parental discipline also are predicted by both individual- and community-level
factors.
Individual characteristics of both children and parents predict the forms of discipline that parents
use. Overall, parents are more likely to use a wide range of types of discipline as well as harsher forms
of discipline with children who have characteristics that make their behavior more difficult to control
(Larzelere, 2000). For instance, compared to children whose behaviors are easier to manage, children
who have problems with conduct (Lytton, 1990), attention (Alizadeh, Applequist, and Coolidge,
2007), and noncompliance (Patterson, 2002) are more likely to experience harsh discipline. Likewise,
children who have high levels of negative emotionality and irritable temperaments are less likely to
comply with parents’ socialization efforts and more likely to elicit parents’ hostile and inconsistent
discipline (Bates, Schermerhorn, and Petersen, 2014). Reciprocal, bidirectional, and transactional pro-
cesses unfold over time so that children with these difficult characteristics elicit harsher discipline,
such as corporal punishment, but harsher discipline also increases children’s risk for subsequent exter-
nalizing behavior problems (Lansford et al., 2011; Patterson, 1982). Specific types of child misbehavior
also have been found to elicit different types of discipline. For example, children’s antisocial behaviors
tend to elicit punishment, whereas failures to act prosocially tend to elicit other-oriented inductive
reasoning (Grusec and Kuczynski, 1980).
Other child characteristics in addition to behavior problems can increase the likelihood that par-
ents will use harsh discipline. One mechanism that can account for this pattern is that characteristics
of children that are challenging and salient evoke parental distress, which then leads to frustrated,
angry, reactive discipline (Deater-Deckard, 2004). Consistent with this perspective, parents use harsher
discipline with children who have disabilities than children without disabilities (for reviews, see Stalker
and McArthur, 2012; Westcott and Jones, 1999; but for caveats see Leeb, Bitsko, Merrick, and Armour,
2012). Parents of children with disabilities may experience high levels of stress because of additional
time and energy they must expend to manage the disability as well as stigma related to the disability

72
 Parenting and Child Discipline

(Deater-Deckard, 2004; Whittingham, Wee, Sanders, and Boyd, 2011). Parents of children with dis-
abilities also may be more likely to react impulsively with corporal punishment rather than more
deliberative forms of discipline if they are less confident in themselves as parents (Alizadeh et al.,
2007; Jones and Prinz, 2005). Particularly if children’s disabilities involve communication difficulties,
parents may be more likely to use corporal punishment if they do not feel able to communicate with
the child verbally using explanations and reasoning (Knutson, Johnson, and Sullivan, 2004). However,
children with all kinds of disabilities (not just those involving communication difficulties) have been
found to be at greater risk for corporal punishment and less likely to experience only nonviolent
discipline (Hendricks, Lansford, Deater-Deckard, and Bornstein, 2014). Focus group discussions with
parents of children with disabilities suggest that extra time related to taking children to medical and
therapy appointments, extra tasks related to managing the child’s disability, being in the spotlight when
the disability draws attention, trouble distinguishing between behaviors that the child can and cannot
control, and difficulty determining what behaviors are appropriate for their child given that standards
for typically developing children may not apply (see also Weisleder, 2011) all increased parents’ stress
and likelihood of using harsh discipline (Whittingham et al., 2011).
Parents’ stress increases their use of harsh and inconsistent discipline through physiological, emo-
tional, and cognitive mechanisms (Deater-Deckard, 2004). Physiologically, high levels of stress affect
brain structure and function in ways that impair psychological functioning (see Lupien, McEwen,
Gunnar, and Heim, 2009, for a review). High levels of stress also increase parents’ negative emotions
such as anxiety and anger, as well as decrease parents’ capacity for regulating their emotions (Deater-
Deckard, 2004). Cognitively, high levels of stress contribute to hostile attribution biases and other
deficits in processing social information (Pinderhughes, Dodge, Zelli, Bates, and Pettit, 2000). In turn,
physiological arousal, negative emotionality and dysregulation, and cognitive biases all decrease par-
ents’ ability to discipline consistently and effectively.
Unlike parents of children with externalizing problems or with disabilities, parents of children
with internalizing problems, such as anxiety and depression, are less likely to use corporal punish-
ment (Grogan-Kaylor and Otis, 2007), although parents’ use of corporal punishment predicts the
subsequent development of internalizing problems (Gershoff, 2002; Lansford et al., 2014). Parents are
likely responding in part to how they perceive their children as receiving different forms of discipline.
As corporal punishment and other forms of discipline high in power assertion have been found to
jeopardize the internalization of parents’ socialization attempts for children who are anxious and fear-
ful (Kochanska, Aksan, and Joy, 2007), parents may respond by reducing their use of harsh discipline
with such children.
Parents’ characteristics, in addition to child characteristics, also predict parents’ use of different
forms of discipline. For example, lower-SES parents are more likely to use corporal punishment and
less likely to use inductive reasoning than higher-SES parents (Ryan, Kalil, Ziol-Guest, and Padilla,
2016). Parents who themselves experienced corporal punishment as children are more likely to use
corporal punishment with their own children (Wang, Xing, and Zhao, 2014). Parents who hold
social-cognitive biases that favor aggression, including making hostile attributions in ambiguous situ-
ations and positively evaluating aggressive responses, are more likely to use corporal punishment than
are parents without these biases (Lansford et al., 2014; Milner, 2000). Parents who have an external
locus of control and believe their child is responsible for parent–child interactions are more likely to
have a harsh, angry disciplinary style compared to parents who believe they are responsible for parent–
child interactions (Rodriguez, 2010).
Some predictors of parental discipline are not related to individual child or parent characteristics
but rather community-level factors. One of the most important of these factors involves community
norms and expectations about advisable forms of discipline. In nationally representative samples of
parents of 2- to 4-year-old children in 24 low- and middle-income countries, country of residence
accounted for 27% to 38% of the variance in whether parents reported believing it was necessary

73
 Jennifer E. Lansford

to use corporal punishment to rear a child properly, 11% to 18% of the variance in whether parents
reported using severe forms of corporal punishment (hitting on the head or beating with an imple-
ment), and 11% to 18% of the variance in parents’ reports of nonviolent forms of discipline, such as
offering explanations or giving the child something else to do (Lansford and Deater-Deckard, 2012).
To illustrate this range, 93% of parents in Syria reported believing it was necessary to use corporal
punishment to rear a child properly in contrast to only 4% of parents in Albania. Forty percent of
parents in Mongolia and Yemen reported that their child had experienced severe forms of corporal
punishment in the last month compared to only 1% in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. No par-
ents in Mongolia reported that their child experienced only nonviolent discipline in the last month,
whereas 49% of parents in Albania did so.
Country-wide differences in attitudes about and use of particular forms of discipline can be attrib-
uted in part to national laws and policies regarding childrearing. For example, as of October 2018,
54 countries had outlawed all forms of corporal punishment (Global Initiative to End All Corporal
Punishment of Children, 2018). In some countries, attitudes about the acceptability of corporal pun-
ishment began declining even before the legal ban and then continued to decline after the ban (e.g., in
Sweden, which was the first country to outlaw corporal punishment, see Durrant, 1999), but in other
countries, legal bans have been passed with the goal of changing parents’ attitudes as well as behaviors
(see Zolotor and Puzia, 2010). Some cultural groups are more tolerant or even encouraging of dif-
ferent forms of violence than others (e.g., Nisbett and Cohen, 1996). For example, cultural groups
with higher levels of warfare, aggression between adults, and socialization of aggression in children
are also characterized by harsher and more frequent corporal punishment than cultural groups with
less endorsement of violence at a societal level (Lansford and Dodge, 2008). Thus, community-level
factors can shape parental discipline.
To summarize, both individual-level and community-level factors predict parents’ use of different
types of discipline. At an individual level, harsher forms of discipline are predicted both by charac-
teristics of children, such as conduct problems or disabilities, that make them more difficult to parent
and by characteristics of parents, such as low levels of education or stressful life events, that leave them
with fewer material or psychological resources to cope with difficult child behavior. At a community
level, cultural norms regarding the appropriateness of particular forms of discipline as well as laws and
policies shape how individual parents respond to their children’s misbehavior.

Consequences of Discipline
Specific forms of discipline are generally related to a diverse set of child outcomes. For example,
reviews and meta-analyses have demonstrated that corporal punishment predicts more child external-
izing problems, internalizing problems, and academic difficulties as well as poorer relationships with
parents, internalization of values, and moral development (e.g., Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor, 2016).
Regardless of how corporal punishment was operationalized, a rigorous meta-analysis found that 94%
of effect sizes showed detrimental child outcomes associated with corporal punishment (Gershoff,
2002). Features of study designs did not moderate the links between corporal punishment and poorer
child outcomes (Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor, 2016). Likewise, the severity of corporal punishment
and parents’ perceptions of its justness have not been found to moderate links between parents’ use of
corporal punishment and children’s subsequent externalizing behaviors (Alampay et al., 2017). That
is, more child externalizing behaviors are longitudinally predicted by more frequent corporal punish-
ment, even if parents believe themselves to be justified in their use of corporal punishment and do not
perceive it as being too severe.
More research has focused on consequences of corporal punishment than other forms of disci-
pline. However, research suggests that other forms of discipline, such as inductive reasoning, are related
to positive child outcomes in many domains rather than a mixture of positive and negative outcomes.

74
 Parenting and Child Discipline

In a meta-analysis of how preschoolers’ self-regulation is related to different types of parenting, better

child self-regulation was related to positive control (which included features of inductive reasoning,
such as teaching, encouraging, and guiding the child) and to less negative control (which included
power assertion; Karreman, van Tuijl, van Aken, and Deković, 2006).
Other-oriented induction is especially important for promoting moral and prosocial behavior
(e.g., Krevans and Gibbs, 1996). Adolescents’ perceptions of their mothers’ love withdrawal and power
assertion are unrelated to adolescents’ moral identity (operationalized as adolescents’ ascribing moral
qualities, such as kindness and fairness to themselves, more than nonmoral qualities, such as athleticism
and intelligence), but mothers’ use of induction predicts higher moral identity (Patrick and Gibbs,
2012). Adolescents responded with more guilt as well as positive emotions to inductive discipline than
to love withdrawal or power assertion and also regarded induction, including focusing on harm caused
to other people and disappointment in expectations, as being a more appropriate form of discipline
(Patrick and Gibbs, 2012).
Across a number of outcomes, corporal punishment is related to more problematic child behaviors,
emotions, and relationships, whereas inductive reasoning is related to more adaptive child behav-
iors, emotions, and relationships. One explanation for these consistent patterns of findings across
several outcomes is that corporal punishment causes pain and models an aggressive response to an
interpersonal conflict. By contrast, inductive reasoning increases empathy and prosocial behavior by
focusing on how a child’s behavior affects other people.

Overall Parent–Child Relationship Climate

Consistent with the idea from theoretical models that parenting practices and parenting styles are dis-
tinct, parental discipline (as a parenting practice) is situated in the overall context of the parent–child
relationship, which may be shaped by a particular parenting style. The overall climate of the parent–
child relationship affects how receptive children are to parents’ attempts to socialize them through
particular forms of discipline (Grusec and Goodnow, 1994).
If the overall parent–child relationship is warm and loving rather than hostile or neglectful,
children will be more motivated to obey their parents, making discipline attempts easier and more
effective. The overall parent–child relationship context may therefore moderate links between
specific discipline attempts and child outcomes (e.g., Fletcher, Walls, Cook, Madison, and Bridges,
2008). For example, for children who were securely attached to their parents at 15 months, there
was no association between parents’ later power assertion and the development of children’s anti-
social behavior and resentful opposition between 25 and 67 months, links that were significant
only for children who were insecurely attached at 15 months (Kochanska, Barry, Stellern, and
O’Bleness, 2009).
The question of whether links between corporal punishment and negative child outcomes are
attenuated in the context of a generally positive parent–child relationship has been controversial and
yielded mixed research findings. Some studies have shown that corporal punishment is unrelated to
negative child outcomes if the parent–child relationship is generally warm and loving (McLoyd and
Smith, 2002). Others have shown that even if the parent–child relationship is generally warm and
loving, corporal punishment is still related to negative child outcomes (Stacks, Oshio, Gerard, and Roe,
2009). Still other studies have suggested that corporal punishment has even more negative effects in
the context of a generally warm parent–child relationship (Lansford et al., 2014), perhaps because
children have a difficult time resolving discrepancies in parents’ behaviors and feel uncertain from
moment to moment about how parents will treat them.
Parental discipline encompasses specific behaviors, but these behaviors are situated within the
overall climate of the parent–child relationship. There is evidence that parent–child relationships that
are loving and supportive are more conducive to the internalization of messages parents try to convey

75
 Jennifer E. Lansford

in their discipline responses. However, corporal punishment may have detrimental effects even in the
context of generally warm parent–child relationships.

Main Effects and Moderators of Links Between Parental

Discipline and Child Behavior
Child gender, parent gender, child age, temperament, and culture or country have been examined both
as main effect predictors of different forms of parental discipline and as potential moderators of links
between parental discipline and children’s adjustment. Each will be considered in turn.

Child Gender
The most consistent main effect of child gender on parental discipline reported in the literature is
that sons are more likely to be disciplined with corporal punishment and harsh verbal responses than
are daughters, but the effects are generally small and often inconsistent, with many studies reporting
no gender differences (Jansen et al., 2012; Lytton and Romney, 1991; MacKenzie, Nicklas, Brooks-
Gunn, and Waldfogel, 2011). Using nationally representative samples of families with 2- to 4-year-
old children in 32 low- and middle-income countries, girls were found to experience less corporal
punishment than boys, but the effect sizes were so small as to be trivial (Deater-Deckard and Lansford,
2016). Taken together, there is more evidence for similarities than differences in sons’ and daughters’
discipline by parents.
Even if parents discipline sons and daughters in similar ways, gender might moderate links between
parental discipline and child outcomes. In a meta-analysis, links between parents’ use of corporal pun-
ishment and children’s externalizing behavior outcomes were stronger if the sample included more
boys than girls (Gershoff, 2002). One possibility is that boys who experience corporal punishment
develop aggressive and antisocial behaviors, whereas girls who are corporally punished are more likely
to develop internalizing problems, such as anxiety and depression (Gershoff, 2002). There is little evi-
dence in the literature regarding whether child gender moderates links between parents’ use of other
forms of discipline and children’s outcomes.

Parent Gender
Studies that have examined the main effects of parents’ gender on their use of different forms of dis-
cipline generally find no differences between discipline used by mothers and fathers (e.g., Feldman
and Klein, 2003) or that mothers use more of all types of discipline than do fathers (e.g., Hallers-
Haalboom et al., 2016). In a study of mothers and fathers of 8-year-olds in nine countries, mothers
reported using corporal punishment more frequently than fathers in seven of the countries (Lansford,
Alampay, et al., 2010). In the other two countries (Sweden, where corporal punishment has been
illegal since 1979, and Thailand), corporal punishment was used by very few mothers or fathers.
Mothers, compared to fathers in the same families, also have been found to manage their children’s
behaviors using more noncoercive verbal strategies (Volling, Blandon, and Gorvine, 2006). Compared
to fathers, mothers may more frequently witness children’s misbehaviors and therefore be in a better
position to respond to them because, on average, mothers spend more time with children than fathers
do (Huerta et al., 2013).
Child outcomes may depend not only on discipline they experience from each parent indepen-
dently but also on the combination of discipline they experience from both parents (and other caregiv-
ers) jointly. In a study of “dyadic concordance types,” operationalized as whether corporal punishment
was used by neither parent, just the mother, just the father, or both parents, adults reported engaging in
more antisocial behavior if they recalled experiencing corporal punishment from both parents when

76
 Parenting and Child Discipline

they were children than if they recalled experiencing corporal punishment from just one parent or
neither parent (Rebellon and Straus, 2017). These findings were consistent in Belgium, Canada, China,
Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States and after
controlling for retrospective reports of childhood misbehavior. Better emotional adjustment during
adolescence also has been linked with having at least one authoritative parent rather than two authori-
tarian parents (McKinney and Renk, 2008). Thus, there is some evidence that mothers and fathers can
buffer their children from adverse effects of some forms of discipline administered by the other parent
and that children are especially at risk if both parents use detrimental forms of discipline.

Child Age
Adaptive parenting requires tailoring discipline strategies to children’s age and developmental status.
For toddlers and preschoolers, appropriate discipline may involve simply distracting children or giving
them something different to do to redirect their attention away from misbehaviors, but as children
develop cognitively and can understand more complex reasoning and explanations, parents’ discipline
approaches will be more adaptive if they change to rely more on reasoning to manage children’s
behaviors (Collins, Madsen, and Susman-Stillman, 2002). As children develop, parents also change
their approach to discipline to appeal more to children’s sense of humor, guilt, and responsibility
because parents perceive that older children are better able to control their own behavior and that,
therefore, misbehaviors are more likely deliberate (Collins et al., 2002). Parents’ use of corporal pun-
ishment also declines as children grow older (Straus and Stewart, 1999).
As children develop, they also come to regard parents’ authority as being less tied to their capac-
ity to administer punishments and rewards and more tied to parents’ knowledge and skills, which
increases the importance of inductive reasoning (Braine, Pomerantz, Lorber, and Krantz, 1991; Mac-
coby, 1984). Compared to 4-year-olds, 6-year-olds were less likely to say that they would adhere to
social conventions because authority figures prohibited particular behaviors or to avoid punishments
and more likely to refer to reasons that involved the accepted nature of the social conventions (Yau
and Smetana, 2003). However, regardless of how authority figures responded, both ages thought moral
transgressions were more serious than violations of social conventions, suggesting that the nature of
the transgression is also important to understanding children’s perceptions of what parents’ disciplin-
ary response should be (Padilla-Walker, 2008). The ultimate goal of parental discipline is to teach
children how to behave in desired ways even in the absence of rewards and punishments, so having
children internalize their parents’ socialization messages is important so that as children develop, they
will behave because of an internalized set of values and standards rather than just in the presence of an
authority figure to obtain rewards or avoid punishments.
In a meta-analysis that tested age as a moderator of the association between parents’ use of corporal
punishment and children’s externalizing behaviors, the association was stronger when the sample was 10
to 12 years of age than when the sample was younger or older (Gershoff, 2002). In explaining this cur-
vilinear relation, Gershoff (2002) hypothesized that child effects may play a role because aggressive 10- to
12-year-olds elicit more corporal punishment than younger children do because parents believe that older
children should be able to control their behavior and react more harshly when these expectations are not
met. Furthermore, she hypothesized that the association may have been weaker for the adolescents older
than age 12 because corporal punishment is rarely used with this older age group and that aggressive and
antisocial behaviors for older adolescents may be more influenced by peers (Gershoff, 2002).

Temperament
Children with more difficult temperaments elicit harsher and more inconsistent discipline from their
parents, and harsh and inconsistent discipline increases children’s fearfulness, irritability, and negative

77
 Jennifer E. Lansford

emotionality (Lengua and Kovacs, 2005). Not only does temperament have main effects on the types
of discipline parents use, temperament also moderates the way that particular forms of discipline are
related to child outcomes. For example, for temperamentally fearful and anxious toddlers, socialization
messages are internalized better when mothers deemphasize power and use gentle forms of discipline
(Kochanska, 1995). For more temperamentally fearless toddlers, however, minimizing anxiety is less
of a concern, but socialization messages were better internalized when toddlers are securely attached
and mothers use this cooperative relationship as the basis of their discipline (Kochanska, 1995). Tem-
peramental resistance to control also moderates the relation between parents’ restrictive control and
children’s later externalizing behaviors, with more restrictive control predicting fewer child external-
izing behaviors for children who are high but not low in resistance to control (Bates, Pettit, Dodge,
and Ridge, 1998). It is possible that restrictive control gives children at risk for externalizing problems
fewer opportunities to engage in such behaviors (Bates et al., 1998).

Culture or Country
Different cultural groups and countries demonstrate large differences in parents’ use of different
forms of discipline and beliefs in the appropriateness of different forms of discipline (Lansford and
Deater-Deckard, 2012). As described earlier, country of residence predicts a large proportion of
the variance in parents’ use of different forms of discipline (Lansford and Deater-Deckard, 2012),
in part because of differences in laws and policies (Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punish-
ment of Children, 2018). For example, corporal punishment in Finland was outlawed in 1983. Data
from a representative sample of Finnish 15- to 80-year-olds demonstrated that corporal punishment
was not decreasing in the 39 years prior to the legal ban, but children born after the legal ban were
significantly less likely to have been corporally punished than children born before the legal ban,
suggesting a turning point that could be attributed to the change in the law (Österman, Björkqvist,
and Wahlbeck, 2014). However, even in some countries that have legally banned corporal punish-
ment, large proportions of children continue to experience corporal punishment (Lansford et al.,
2017). For example, three years after Togo outlawed corporal punishment, 77% of mothers reported
that their child had experienced corporal punishment in the last month; eight years after Ukraine
outlawed corporal punishment, 32% of mothers still reported that their child had experienced cor-
poral punishment in the last month (Lansford et al., 2017). An analysis of five countries in Europe
(Austria, France, Germany, Spain, and Sweden) that have varied in terms of their implementation
of legal bans and parent education programs regarding the detriments of corporal punishment and
benefits of using alternative forms of discipline showed that countries with the lowest rates of cor-
poral punishment were those that had legally outlawed it as well as launched educational campaigns
(Bussmann, Erthal, and Schroth, 2011).
Most studies of whether cultural group moderates the link between corporal punishment and
child outcomes have been conducted with different ethnic groups in the United States, but these links
have now been tested in several countries as well. In a study of mother–child dyads in China, India,
Italy, Kenya, the Philippines, and Thailand, the association between corporal punishment and child
aggression and anxiety was weaker in countries in which corporal punishment was more normative,
but more frequent corporal punishment was related to more child aggression and anxiety in all six
countries (Lansford et al., 2005). In these same six countries, mothers’ expressions of disappointment
and yelling were also related to more child aggression, and expressions of disappointment, time-outs,
and shaming were related to more child anxiety; children’s perceptions of the normativeness of these
forms of discipline moderated some of the associations between that type of discipline and child
aggression and anxiety (Gershoff et al., 2010). A meta-analysis of links between corporal punishment
and 17 child outcomes revealed that effect sizes did not differ by the country in which the study was
conducted (Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor, 2016).

78
 Parenting and Child Discipline

Cultural differences in discipline may arise not only in frequency of using particular strategies and
links between certain forms of discipline and child outcomes. Differences across cultures exist both in
parents’ perceptions of what are desired and undesired behaviors and in broader contexts that support
desired behaviors. For example, in some societies, children have the opportunity to engage in prosocial
behavior in the course of their everyday lives as they care for younger siblings or do chores that benefit
the whole family (de Guzman, Edwards, and Carlo, 2005). In these contexts, prosocial behavior is
often promoted implicitly as children take care of other family members’ needs rather than through
more abstract inductive reasoning. However, if children have few chances to behave prosocially by
directly contributing to the welfare of other people, parents may use inductive reasoning to try to
socialize children to behave prosocially (Hastings, Utendale, and Sullivan, 2007).
To summarize, a number of factors have been examined both in terms of main effects they may
have on parents’ use of different types of discipline and in terms of ways in which they might moder-
ate links between parents’ discipline and children’s adjustment. Child gender, parent gender, child age,
temperament, and culture or country are among these factors. When main effects are found, boys
generally experience more corporal punishment than girls, mothers use more of a variety of forms
of discipline than do fathers, use of reasoning increases and use of corporal punishment decreases
with child age, children with more difficult temperaments experience harsher forms of discipline
than children with easier temperaments, and use of corporal punishment is more frequent in coun-
tries without legal prohibitions and with cultural norms that are accepting of its use. A number of
moderation effects have been found, suggesting the importance of taking into account gender, age,
temperament, and cultural contexts in understanding links between different types of discipline and
children’s adjustment.

Mediators of Links Between Parental Discipline and Child Behavior

Links between parental discipline and child behavior are often indirect or mediated by cognitive and
emotional pathways involving the ways children perceive and respond to other people. For example,
corporal punishment is related to the development of children’s social information processing biases
and deficits, which in turn predict aggressive behavior (Weiss, Dodge, Bates, and Pettit, 1992). Corpo-
ral punishment increases the likelihood that children will believe that others acted with hostile intent,
even in benign or ambiguous social situations; children who make hostile attributions are then more
likely to respond aggressively (Dodge and Coie, 1987). Children who have experienced corporal pun-
ishment are also more likely to access aggression as a possible way to respond in a given social situation
and to evaluate aggression more positively (Weiss et al., 1992).
Links between different forms of discipline and child outcomes also are mediated by children’s per-
ceptions of their parents and the parent–child relationship. For example, in a low-income U.S. sample,
the link between corporal punishment and children’s psychological maladjustment was mediated by
children’s perceptions of their parents as rejecting them (Rohner et al., 1996). In a sample from China,
India, the Philippines, and Thailand, the links between corporal punishment and harsh verbal disci-
pline and children’s anxiety and aggression were mediated by children’s perceptions of their mothers’
hostility (Lansford, Malone, et al., 2010). Thus, it may not be simply that some forms of discipline have
direct effects on children’s behavioral and psychological adjustment, but that the way that discipline
affects children’s development operates through information that discipline conveys to children about
how their parents feel about them.
In contrast to corporal punishment, which is linked to hostile attributions, positive evaluations of
aggression, and perceptions of parents as being hostile and rejecting, inductive reasoning is linked to
empathy, as it promotes taking other people’s perspectives and trying to understand the effects of one’s
actions on others. The development of children’s empathy mediates the association between inductive
reasoning and children’s prosocial behavior (Krevans and Gibbs, 1996). Experiencing power-assertive

79
 Jennifer E. Lansford

discipline during childhood, however, is related to less empathy in childhood as well as adulthood
(Lopez, Bonenberger, and Schneider, 2001).
The development of conscience also mediates the link between parents’ discipline and child out-
comes, particularly with respect to moral behavior (Kochanska, 1993). Parents’ discipline can shape
the extent to which children feel guilt and anxiety associated with misbehaving, as well as children’s
capacity to inhibit prohibited behavior and behave prosocially (Kochanska, 1993). The development
of children’s conscience is associated with their mothers’ references to emotions rather than rules or
consequences in conflict episodes (Laible and Thompson, 2002). When preschoolers are securely
attached to their mothers, discussions of situations in which children have misbehaved or behaved well
are more likely to refer to moral evaluations and emotions, which in turn predict conscience develop-
ment (Laible and Thompson, 2000).
Taken together, research on mechanisms through which parental discipline affects child outcomes
suggests the importance of cognitive and socioemotional pathways. Cognitively, experiencing cor-
poral punishment increases the likelihood of children’s social information processing biases, which in
turn increase future aggressive behavior. Socioemotional pathways involve children’s perceptions of
their parents’ rejection or hostility as well as the development of empathy and conscience.

Practical Information About Parental Discipline

Research on parental discipline has been used to inform policies related to child protection and in
interventions designed to enhance parenting, thereby improving child outcomes. The 1989 United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) asserts children’s right to protection from all
forms of abuse and exploitation and has been ratified by all countries except the United States. From
a human rights perspective, corporal punishment is not just an inadvisable discipline strategy because
it is related to worse child outcomes but is also unacceptable because using corporal punishment is
disrespectful and a violation of the right to protection that all people, regardless of age, have. Periodic
reviews of how well countries fare with respect to child protection have contributed to exponential
growth in the number of countries that have outlawed all forms of corporal punishment (Global
Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, 2018). Child protection through preventing
all forms of violence against children continues to be prioritized in international circles, including
in Target 16.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted in 2015 by the United
Nations General Assembly to guide the international agenda through 2030 (United Nations, 2017).
Despite the legal bans against corporal punishment in 54 countries as of October 2018, many
countries still allow corporal punishment. For example, corporal punishment is legal in the United
States, where laws try to distinguish corporal punishment from physical abuse by references to factors
such as whether the act leaves bruises or marks that last more than 24 hours or results in pain but not
injuries. Milder forms of corporal punishment are a risk factor for more severe forms of corporal
punishment (Lansford, Wager, Bates, Pettit, and Dodge, 2012), suggesting a continuum of harsh treat-
ment rather than a qualitative difference between corporal punishment and physical abuse (Russa and
Rodriguez, 2010).
The majority of parents in some countries continue to use corporal punishment (Lansford and
Deater-Deckard, 2012), despite scientific evidence regarding its detrimental effects and international
decrees that it is a violation of children’s rights (Gershoff, 2013). Therefore, many international inter-
vention efforts have turned to ways to eliminate parents’ use of corporal punishment and promote
parents’ use of nonpunitive forms of discipline (Britto, Ponguta, Reyes, and Karnati, 2015), in addition
to legislation to outlaw corporal punishment (see Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment
of Children, 2018).
In many countries, legislation evolves over time. For example, in 1979 Sweden became the first
country to outlaw all forms of corporal punishment, but intermediary legal reforms occurred for

80
 Parenting and Child Discipline

decades prior to the ban (Durrant and Janson, 2005). One notable intermediary reform was the
removal in 1957 of the section of the Penal Code that exempted parents from physical assault charges
in disciplinary cases. When the legal ban was passed, the news was widely publicized (e.g., with
announcements on milk cartons). Efforts at raising public awareness were successful, as one year after
the law was passed, more than 90% of the Swedish population was aware of the ban on corporal pun-
ishment (Ziegert, 1983). Since that time, legal refinements have continued to reaffirm and extend the
protection of children’s rights (Durrant and Janson, 2005).
Because corporal punishment is used more frequently in cultural groups where it is perceived as
being more normative and accepted, as well as by parents within a cultural group who perceive it
as being more normative and accepted (Lansford et al., 2014), some interventions have attempted to
reduce or eliminate parents’ use of corporal punishment by changing their beliefs about its accept-
ability and effectiveness (Chavis et al., 2013; Lansford and Bornstein, 2007). Changing parents’ beliefs
might be important, but it is likely not sufficient because in a diverse range of countries, more parents
use corporal punishment than believe that it is necessary to use corporal punishment to rear children
properly, suggesting that beliefs about discipline do not align perfectly with discipline behaviors (Lans-
ford and Deater-Deckard, 2012).
An example of an intervention that has attempted to change beliefs about the necessity and appro-
priateness of corporal punishment addresses the “spare the rod, spoil the child” barrier to eliminat-
ing corporal punishment among conservative Protestant religious groups (Perrin, Miller-Perrin, and
Song, 2017). Conservative Protestants have been found to use more corporal punishment than other
religious groups (Gershoff, Miller, and Holden, 1999). An intervention that randomly assigned stu-
dents at a conservative Christian university to a research-based intervention (which presented research
findings about the negative effects of corporal punishment), a biblical reinterpretation intervention
(which offered a progressive reinterpretation of the “spare the rod, spoil the child” biblical passages),
or a no-intervention control group found the greatest reduction in endorsement of corporal punish-
ment when students were exposed to the biblical reinterpretation plus research-based intervention
(Perrin et al., 2017). This research suggests that attempts to reduce corporal punishment will benefit
from attending to reasons motivating its use.
Ultimately, an important goal of parenting interventions focused on parental discipline is to
improve child outcomes. In describing coercive cycles in which children’s misbehavior leads to harsh
disciplinary responses that then lead to worse child behavior in a series of reciprocal transactions that
escalate over time, Patterson (1982) argued that training parents in how to discipline their children
more effectively held the greatest potential for reducing children’s antisocial behavior. Several inter-
ventions have shown promise in improving parental discipline and child outcomes (see [Link]-
[Link] for a summary).
Parent Management Training is an example of a program that has been found to decrease both
coercive parenting and children’s antisocial behavior, using rigorous randomized controlled trials (e.g.,
Forgatch, Patterson, DeGarmo, and Beldavs, 2009). Parents of 3- to 16-year-olds learn about effec-
tive discipline and family management strategies, and the program can be modified to meet the
needs of individual families (Forgatch, DeGarmo, and Beldavs, 2005). Similarly, the Video feedback
Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD) was demonstrated
in a randomized controlled trial to improve mothers’ attitudes about and use of sensitive discipline
(operationalized as using distraction, inductive reasoning, or trying to understand the child’s perspec-
tive as opposed to commands, expressions of disapproval, physical obstruction, or giving in) with
1- to 3-year-olds (Van Zeijl et al., 2006). The VIPP-SD is a fairly intensive intervention for families
of children with externalizing behavior problems, involving six in-home sessions of 1.5 hours each,
but less intensive interventions also have been found to be beneficial. A group of parents randomly
assigned to an intervention group that read summaries of scientific findings regarding the negative
effects of corporal punishment showed a decline in positive attitudes about corporal punishment; the

81
 Jennifer E. Lansford

control group’s attitudes did not change over time (Holden, Brown, Baldwin, and Croft Caderao,
2014). Other interventions focus on promoting sensitive, responsive caregiving and positive forms of
discipline such as inductive reasoning (e.g., Durrant et al., 2017). For example, the Positive Discipline
in Everyday Parenting Program has been adapted for use in 13 countries, providing insights into ways
to decrease punitive parenting in a range of contexts: Australia, Canada, Gambia, Georgia, Guatemala,
Japan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Palestine, Paraguay, Philippines, the Solomon Islands, and Venezuela. Inter-
ventions attempting to alter parents’ discipline are most effective if they target not only beliefs and
attitudes but also behaviors and if they give parents opportunities for practicing what they learned
with their own child in the presence of a trained facilitator who can provide feedback on parent–child
interactions and offer suggestions for changes (UNICEF, 2017).
To summarize, international efforts to protect children from all forms of corporal punishment have accel-
erated following the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The number of countries that have outlawed
corporal punishment continues to grow. Ideally, legal bans are accompanied by educational campaigns to
make parents aware of the legal ban and advise them about alternate, effective forms of discipline. Even in
countries that have not outlawed corporal punishment, parenting interventions often attempt to help parents
use more proactive and inductive forms of discipline rather than resorting to corporal punishment.

Future Directions in Research on Parental Discipline

Despite the long history of theoretical models of parental discipline and empirical studies of predic-
tors and consequences of experiencing different types of discipline, future theory and research are
especially needed in three key areas: child effects, neuroscience, and gene × environment interactions.
First, additional research is needed to help understand child effects in relation to parental discipline.
Because children with behavior problems elicit harsher and less consistent discipline and more of all
kinds of discipline than do children who are well behaved, child effects should be well accounted for
in statistical analyses of relations between parental discipline and child adjustment (Larzelere, Kuhn,
and Johnson, 2004). Unless ways that children affect their parents are considered, models can be mis-
specified and counterintuitive. For example, if inductive reasoning appears to be related to more child
aggression, the likely causal direction is not from parents’ inductive reasoning to children’s aggres-
sion but rather that more aggressive children elicit more parental attempts to address the aggression
through inductive reasoning by explaining how aggression hurts other people (see Larzelere et al.,
2004). Future research is needed to understand transactional relations between diverse forms of paren-
tal discipline and children’s outcomes to understand what forms of discipline are most effective and
for whom, after taking into account children’s propensity for problem behaviors.
Second, neuroscience is a burgeoning area of research with the potential for advancing under-
standing of ways in which parental discipline affects child outcomes. Corporal punishment is related
to cortisol production and has been demonstrated to affect the brain through the hypothalamic–
pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis (Bugental, Martorell, and Barraza, 2003; Kohrt et al., 2014). Less gray
matter (structural elements of the brain that are important in processing emotions and higher-level
executive functions, such as making decisions) in the prefrontal cortex has been found for young
adults who reported that as children they experienced corporal punishment at least one time a month
and corporal punishment with an object at least one time a year compared to young adults who were
not chronically corporally punished when they were children (Tomoda et al., 2009). Post-traumatic
stress disorder (Bremner et al., 1997), depression (Fitzgerald, Laird, Maller, and Daskalakis, 2008), and
other mental health problems (Gershoff, 2016) are affected by the area of the prefrontal cortex that
also is affected by corporal punishment. Therefore, Gershoff (2016) has argued that corporal punish-
ment is a form of toxic stress with harmful effects on brain structure and function. Future work in
neuroscience offers the potential to understand other brain mechanisms that are implicated in links
between parental discipline and children’s development.

82
 Parenting and Child Discipline

Third, future research on genetic factors and gene × environment interactions has the potential
to contribute to knowledge regarding additional moderators of links between parental discipline and
child outcomes. Studies using genetically sensitive twin designs have demonstrated that both genetic
and shared environmental effects contribute to links between children’s prosocial behavior and more
positive, noncoercive discipline as well as less punitive, coercive discipline (Knafo and Plomin, 2006).
Meta-analyses of studies with genetically informative designs have demonstrated that parenting is
shaped by parents’ genotype and environmental factors (Klahr and Burt, 2014), as well as by chil-
dren’s genetically influenced behaviors (Avinun and Knafo, 2014). Specific genotypes contribute to
children’s susceptibility to mothers’ positive discipline, which increases children’s compliance (Kok
et al., 2013). Future genetically informative research offers the potential to disentangle the extent
to which associations between parents’ impulsive, harsh discipline and children’s behavior problems
can be accounted for by factors that are transmitted genetically from parent to child (manifested as
parents’ aggression toward the child and children’s aggression toward peers in the two generations,
respectively), as well as the extent to which genes can moderate effects of environmental experiences
related to parental discipline on child outcomes.
To summarize, future theoretical approaches and empirical studies will benefit from fully incor-
porating child effects into transactional models describing how parental discipline and children’s
adjustment reciprocally influence one another over time. In addition, rapid advances in neuroimaging
technology will make it possible for future research to advance understanding of how different forms
of discipline are related to brain structure and function. Finally, future research on gene × environment
interactions will provide an important advance in understanding how genetic factors may moderate
links between the experience of particular types of discipline and children’s adjustment.

Conclusions
The idea that parents can use rewards and punishments to shape children’s behavior stems from his-
torical roots in behaviorism. Theories guiding the study of parental discipline often treat discipline
as part of the “control” dimension of parenting, which is orthogonal to the “warmth” dimension;
specific forms of discipline are parenting practices that are contextualized by parenting styles. The
most frequently studied forms of discipline include inductive reasoning, in which parents discuss with
children how their behavior affects other people, and power assertion, particularly corporal punish-
ment. A large body of empirical work demonstrates the benefits of inductive reasoning in promoting
prosocial behavior and the detriments of corporal punishment in predicting a range of problematic
child outcomes. Potential moderators of links between particular forms of discipline and child out-
comes include child gender, child age, temperament, and culture, but the general findings regarding
the benefits of inductive reasoning and detriments of corporal punishment are robust. Mediators of
links between parental discipline and child outcomes include cognitive biases and emotional insecuri-
ties that can stem from harsh discipline as well as empathy and the development of conscience that
are supported through inductive reasoning. Theory and research on parental discipline are timely and
important to advance scientific understanding as well as policies and practices to optimize parents’
use of nonpunitive, effective forms of discipline to protect children while socializing them to become
well-functioning members of their respective societies.

Acknowledgments
Lansford’s program of research on parental discipline has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant RO1-HD054805 and Fogarty
International Center grant RO3-TW008141.

83
 Jennifer E. Lansford

References
Alampay, L. P., Godwin, J., Lansford, J. E., Bombi, A. S., Bornstein, M. H., Chang, L., . . . Bacchini, D. (2017).
Severity and justness do not moderate the relation between corporal punishment and negative child outcomes:
A multicultural and longitudinal study. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 41, 491–502.
Alizadeh, H., Applequist, K. F., and Coolidge, F. L. (2007). Parental self-confidence, parenting styles, and corporal
punishment in families of ADHD children in Iran. Child Abuse and Neglect, 31, 567–572.
Anderson, K. E., Lytton, H., and Romney, D. M. (1986). Mothers’ interactions with normal and conduct-disordered
boys: Who affects whom? Developmental Psychology, 22, 604–609.
Avinun, R., and Knafo, A. (2014). Parenting as a reaction evoked by children’s genotype: A meta-analysis of
children-as-twins studies. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18, 87–102.
Baldwin, A. L. (1955). Behavior and development in childhood. New York, NY: Dryden.
Bandura, A. (2016). The power of observational learning through social modeling. In R. J. Sternberg, S. T. Fiske,
and D. J. Foss (Eds.), Scientists making a difference: One hundred eminent behavioral and brain scientists talk about their
most important contributions (pp. 235–239). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Bates, J. E., Pettit, G. S., Dodge, K. A., and Ridge, B. (1998). Interaction of temperamental resistance to control
and restrictive parenting in the development of externalizing behavior. Developmental Psychology, 34, 982–995.
Bates, J. E., Schermerhorn, A. C., and Petersen, I. T. (2014). Temperament concepts in developmental psychopa-
thology. In K. Rudolph and M. Lewis (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychopathology (3rd Ed., pp. 311–329).
New York, NY: Springer.
Baumrind, D. (1967). Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior. Genetic Psychology
Monographs, 75, 43–88.
Baumrind, D. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority. Developmental Psychology Monographs, 4, 1–102.
Baumrind, D. (1991). Parenting styles and adolescent development. In J. Brooks-Gunn, R. Lerner, and A. C.
Petersen (Eds.), The encyclopedia of adolescence (pp. 746–758). New York, NY: Garland Learning Press.
Baumrind, D. (2012). Differentiating between confrontive and coercive kinds of parental power-assertive disci-
plinary practices. Human Development, 55, 35–51.
Becker, W. (1964). Consequences of different kinds of parental discipline. In M. Hoffman and L. Hoffman (Eds.),
Review of child development research (Vol. 1, pp. 169–208). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Berlin, L. J., Dodge, K. A., and Reznick, J. S. (2013). Examining pregnant women’s hostile attributions about
infants as a predictor of offspring maltreatment. JAMA Pediatrics, 167, 549–553.
Bombi, A. S., Di Norcia, A., Di Giunta, L., Pastorelli, C., and Lansford, J. E. (2015). Parenting practices and
child misbehavior: A mixed method study of Italian mothers and children. Parenting: Science and Practice, 15,
207–228.
Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., Lansford, J. E., Pastorelli, C., Skinner, A. T., Sorbring, E., . . . Oburu, P. (2015).
Mother and father socially desirable responding in nine countries: Two kinds of agreement and relations to
parenting self-reports. International Journal of Psychology, 50, 174–185.
Braine, L. G., Pomerantz, E., Lorber, D., and Krantz, D. H. (1991). Conflicts with authority: Children’s feelings,
actions, and justifications. Developmental Psychology, 27, 829–840.
Bremner, J. D., Randall, P., Vermetten, E., Staib, L., Bronen, R. A., Mazure, C., . . . Charney, D. S. (1997). Mag-
netic resonance imaging-based measurement of hippocampal volume in posttraumatic stress disorder related
to childhood physical and sexual abuse: A preliminary report. Biological Psychiatry, 41, 23–32.
Britto, P. R., Ponguta, L. A., Reyes, C., and Karnati, R. (2015). A systematic review of parenting programmes for young
children. New York, NY: UNICEF.
Bugental, D. B., Martorell, G. A., and Barraza, V. (2003). The hormonal costs of subtle forms of infant maltreat-
ment. Hormones and Behavior, 43, 237–244.
Bussmann, K.-D., Erthal, C., and Schroth, A. (2011). Effects of banning corporal punishment in Europe: A five-
nation comparison. In J. E. Durrant and A. B. Smith (Eds.), Global pathways to abolishing physical punishment:
Realizing children’s rights (pp. 299–322). New York, NY: Routledge.
Chavis, A., Hudnut-Beumler, J., Webb, M. W., Neely, J. A., Bickman, L., Dietrich, M. S., and Scholer, S. J. (2013).
A brief intervention affects parents’ attitudes toward using less physical punishment. Child Abuse and Neglect,
37, 1192–1201.
Chilamkurti, C., and Milner, J. S. (1993). Perceptions and evaluations of child transgressions and disciplinary
techniques in high- and low-risk mothers and their children. Child Development, 64, 1801–1814.
Collins, W. A., Madsen, S. D., and Susman-Stillman, A. (2002). Parenting during middle childhood. In M. H.
Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting,Vol. 3: Being and becoming a parent (2nd Ed., pp. 73–101). Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Darling, N., and Steinberg, L. (1993). Parenting style as context: An integrative model. Psychological Bulletin, 113,
487–496.

84
 Parenting and Child Discipline

Davies, P. T., and Cummings, E. M. (1994). Marital conflict and child adjustment: An emotional security hypoth-
esis. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 387–411.
Deater-Deckard, K. (2004). Parenting stress. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Deater-Deckard, K., and Dodge, K. A. (1997). Externalizing behavior problems and discipline revisited: Nonlin-
ear effects and variation by culture, context, and gender. Psychological Inquiry, 8, 161–175.
Deater-Deckard, K., and Lansford, J. E. (2016). Daughters’ and sons’ exposure to childrearing discipline and
violence in low- and middle-income countries. In Gender in low- and middle-income countries. Monograph
of the Society for Research in Child Development, 81(1, Serial No. 320), 78–103.
de Guzman, M. R. T., Edwards, C. P., and Carlo, G. (2005). Prosocial behaviors in context: A study of the Gikuyu
children of Ngecha, Kenya. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 26, 542–558.
Dishion, T. J. (2014). A developmental model of aggression and violence: Microsocial and macrosocial dynamics
within an ecological framework. In M. Lewis and K. D. Rudolph (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychopa-
thology (3rd Ed., pp. 449–465). New York, NY: Plenum.
Dishion, T. J., Connell, A., Weaver, C., Shaw, D., Gardner, F., and Wilson, M. (2008). The Family Check-Up with
high-risk indigent families: Preventing problem behavior by increasing parents’ positive behavior support in
early childhood. Child Development, 79, 1395–1414.
Dix, T. (1991). The affective organization of parenting: Adaptive and maladaptive processes. Psychological Bulletin,
110, 3–25.
Dodge, K. A., and Coie, J. D. (1987). Social-information-processing factors in reactive and proactive aggression
in children’s peer groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1146–1158.
Durrant, J. E. (1999). Evaluating the success of Sweden’s corporal punishment ban. Child Abuse and Neglect, 23,
435–448.
Durrant, J. E., and Janson, S. (2005). Legal reform, corporal punishment and child abuse: The case of Sweden.
International Review of Victimology, 12, 139–158.
Durrant, J. E., Plateau, D., Ateah, C., Holden, G., Barker, L., Stewart-Tufescu, A., . . . Ahmed, R. (2017). Parents’
views of the relevance of a violence prevention program in high, medium, and low human development con-
texts. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 41, 523–531.
Feldman, R., and Klein, P. S. (2003). Toddlers’ self-regulated compliance to mothers, caregivers, and fathers: Impli-
cations for theories of socialization. Developmental Psychology, 39, 680–692.
Fitzgerald, P. B., Laird, A. R., Maller, J., and Daskalakis, Z. J. (2008). A meta-analytic study of changes in brain
activation in depression. Human Brain Mapping, 29, 683–695.
Fletcher, A. C., Walls, J. K., Cook, E. C., Madison, K. J., and Bridges, T. H. (2008). Parenting style as a modera-
tor of associations between maternal disciplinary strategies and child well-being. Journal of Family Issues, 29,
1724–1744.
Forgatch, M. S., DeGarmo, D. S., and Beldavs, Z. G. (2005). An efficacious theory-based intervention for step-
families. Behavior Therapy, 36, 357–365.
Forgatch, M. S., Patterson, G. R., DeGarmo, D. S., and Beldavs, Z. G. (2009). Testing the Oregon delinquency
model with 9-year follow-up of the Oregon Divorce Study. Development and Psychopathology, 21, 637–660.
Fung, H. (1999). Becoming a moral child: The socialization of shame among young Chinese children. Ethos, 27,
180–209.
Fung, H., Li, J., and Lam, C. K. (2017). Multi-faceted discipline strategies of Chinese parenting. International
Journal of Behavioral Development, 41, 472–481.
Gershoff, E. T. (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: A meta-
analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 539–579.
Gershoff, E. T. (2013). Spanking and child development: We know enough now to stop hitting our children.
Child Development Perspectives, 7, 133–137.
Gershoff, E. T. (2016). Should parents’ physical punishment of children be considered a source of toxic stress that
affects brain development? Family Relations, 65, 151–162.
Gershoff, E. T., and Grogan-Kaylor, A. (2016). Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-
analyses. Journal of Family Psychology, 30, 453–469.
Gershoff, E. T., Grogan-Kaylor, A., Lansford, J. E., Chang, L., Zelli, A., Deater-Deckard, K., and Dodge, K. A.
(2010). Parent discipline practices in an international sample: Associations with child behaviors and modera-
tion by perceived normativeness. Child Development, 81, 487–502.
Gershoff, E. T., Miller, P. C., and Holden, G. W. (1999). Parenting influences from the pulpit: Religious affiliation
as a determinant of parental corporal punishment. Journal of Family Psychology, 13, 307–320.
Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children. (2018). Retrieved from [Link]
[Link]/
Grogan-Kaylor, A., and Otis, M. (2007). Predictors of corporal punishment: A tobit analysis. Family Relations, 56,
80–91.

85
 Jennifer E. Lansford

Grusec, J. E., Danyliuk, T., Kil, H., and O’Neill, D. (2017). Perspectives on parent discipline and child outcomes.
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 41, 465–471.
Grusec, J. E., and Goodnow, J. J. (1994). Impact of parental discipline methods on the child’s internalization of
values: A reconceptualization of current points of view. Developmental Psychology, 30, 4–19.
Grusec, J. E., and Kuczynski, L. (1980). Direction of effect in socialization: A comparison of the parent’s versus
the child’s behavior as determinants of disciplinary techniques. Developmental Psychology, 16, 1–9.
Hallers-Haalboom, E. T., Groeneveld, M., Van Berkel, S. R., Endendijk, J. J., Van der Pol, L. D., Bakermans-
Kranenburg, M. J., and Mesman, J. (2016). Wait until your mother gets home! Mothers’ and fathers’ disci-
pline strategies. Social Development, 25, 82–98.
Hastings, P. D., Utendale, W. T., and Sullivan, C. (2007). The socialization of prosocial development. In J. E.
Grusec and P. D. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and research (pp. 638–664). New York, NY:
Guilford Press.
Helwig, C. C., To, S., Wang, Q., Liu, C., and Yang, S. (2014). Judgments and reasoning about parental
discipline involving induction and psychological control in China and Canada. Child Development, 85,
1150–1167.
Hendricks, C., Lansford, J. E., Deater-Deckard, K., and Bornstein, M. H. (2014). Associations between child
disabilities and caregiver discipline and violence in low- and middle-income countries. Child Development,
85, 513–531.
Hoffman, M. L. (1977). Moral internalization: Current theory and research. Advances in Experimental Social Psy-
chology, 10, 85–133.
Hoffman, M. L., and Saltzstein, H. D. (1967). Parent discipline and the child’s moral development. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 45–57.
Holden, G. W., Brown, A. S., Baldwin, A. S., and Croft Caderao, K. (2014). Research findings can change attitudes
about corporal punishment. Child Abuse and Neglect, 38, 902–908.
Holden, G. W., Miller, P. C., and Harris, S. D. (1999). The instrumental side of corporal punishment: Parents’
reported practices and outcome expectancies. Journal of Marriage and Family, 61, 908–919.
Holden, G. W., Williamson, P. A., and Holland, G. W. O. (2014). Eavesdropping on the family: A pilot investiga-
tion of corporal punishment in the home. Journal of Family Psychology, 28, 401–406.
Huang, L., Malone, P. S., Lansford, J. E., Deater-Deckard, K., Di Giunta, L., Bombi, A. S., . . . Bacchini, D.
(2012). Measurement invariance of mother reports of discipline in different cultural contexts. Family Science,
2, 212–219.
Huerta, M. C., Adema, W., Baxter, J., Han, W., Lausten, M., Lee, R., and Waldfogel, J. (2013). Fathers’ leave, fathers’
involvement and child development: Are they related? Evidence from four OECD countries (OECD Social, Employ-
ment and Migration Working Papers, No. 140). Paris, France: OECD Publishing.
Huesmann, L. R., and Guerra, N. G. (1997). Children’s normative beliefs about aggression and aggressive behav-
ior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 409–419.
Jansen, P., Raat, H., Mackenbach, J. P., Hofman, A., Jaddoe, V., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M., . . . Tiemeier, H.
(2012). Early determinants of maternal and paternal harsh discipline: The Generation R Study. Family Rela-
tions, 61, 253–270.
Jones, T. L., and Prinz, R. J. (2005). Potential roles of parental self-efficacy in parent and child adjustment: A
review. Clinical Psychology Review, 25, 341–363.
Karreman, A., van Tuijl, C., van Aken, M. A. G., and Deković, M. (2006). Parenting and self-regulation in pre-
schoolers: A meta-analysis. Infant and Child Development, 15, 561–579.
Khaleque, A., and Rohner, R. P. (2002). Perceived parental acceptance-rejection and psychological adjustment: A
meta-analysis of cross-cultural and intracultural studies. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 64, 54–64.
Klahr, A. M., and Burt, S. A. (2014). Elucidating the etiology of individual differences in parenting: A meta-
analysis of behavioral genetic research. Psychological Bulletin, 140, 544–586.
Knafo, A., and Plomin, R. (2006). Parental discipline and affection and children’s prosocial behavior: Genetic and
environmental links. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 147–164.
Knutson, J. F., DeGarmo, D., Koeppl, G., and Reid, J. B. (2005). Care neglect, supervisory neglect, and harsh
parenting in the development of children’s aggression: A replication and extension. Child Maltreatment, 10,
92–107.
Knutson, J. F., Johnson, C. R., and Sullivan, P. M. (2004). Disciplinary choices of mothers of deaf children and
mothers of normally hearing children. Child Abuse and Neglect, 28, 925–937.
Kochanska, G. (1993). Toward a synthesis of parental socialization and child temperament in early development
of conscience. Child Development, 64, 325–347.
Kochanska, G. (1995). Children’s temperament, mothers’ discipline, and security of attachment: Multiple path-
ways to emerging internalization. Child Development, 66, 597–615.

86
 Parenting and Child Discipline

Kochanska, G., Aksan, N., and Joy, M. E. (2007). Children’s fearfulness as a moderator of parenting in early
socialization: Two longitudinal studies. Developmental Psychology, 43, 222–237.
Kochanska, G., Barry, R. A., Stellern, S. A., and O’Bleness, J. J. (2009). Early attachment organization moderates
the parent-child mutually: Child mutually coercive pathway to children’s antisocial conduct. Child Develop-
ment, 80, 1288–1300.
Kohrt, B. A., Hruschka, D. J., Kohrt, H. E., Carrion, V. G., Waldman, I. D., and Worthman, C. M. (2014).
Child abuse, disruptive behavior disorders, depression, and salivary cortisol levels among institutionalized and
community-residing boys in Mongolia. Asia-Pacific Psychiatry, 7, 7–19.
Kok, R., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., van IJzendoorn, M. H., Velders, F. P., Linting, M., Jaddoe, V. W. V., . . .
Tiemeier, H. (2013). The role of maternal stress during pregnancy, maternal discipline, and child COMT
Val158Met genotype in the development of compliance. Developmental Psychobiology, 55, 451–464.
Krevans, J., and Gibbs, J. C. (1996). Parents’ use of inductive discipline: Relations to children’s empathy and
prosocial behavior. Child Development, 67, 3263–3277.
Laible, D. J., and Thompson, R. A. (2000). Mother-child discourse, attachment security, shared positive affect, and
early conscience development. Child Development, 71, 1424–1440.
Laible, D. J., and Thompson, R. A. (2002). Mother-child conflict in the toddler years: Lessons in emotion, moral-
ity, and relationships. Child Development, 73, 1187–1203.
Lansford, J. E., Alampay, L., Bacchini, D., Bombi, A. S., Bornstein, M. H., Chang, L., . . . Zelli, A. (2010). Cor-
poral punishment of children in nine countries as a function of child gender and parent gender. International
Journal of Pediatrics, 2010, 1–12.
Lansford, J. E., and Bornstein, M. H. (2007). Review of parenting programs in developing countries. New York, NY:
UNICEF.
Lansford, J. E., Cappa, C., Putnick, D. L., Bornstein, M. H., Deater-Deckard, K., and Bradley, R. H. (2017).
Change over time in parents’ beliefs about and reported use of corporal punishment in eight countries with
and without legal bans. Child Abuse and Neglect, 71, 44–55.
Lansford, J. E., Chang, L., Dodge, K. A., Malone, P. S., Oburu, P., Palmérus, K., . . . Quinn, N. (2005). Physi-
cal discipline and children’s adjustment: Cultural normativeness as a moderator. Child Development, 76,
1234–1246.
Lansford, J. E., Criss, M. M., Laird, R. D., Shaw, D. S., Pettit, G. S., Bates, J. E., and Dodge, K. A. (2011). Recipro-
cal relations between parents’ physical discipline and children’s externalizing behavior during middle child-
hood and adolescence. Development and Psychopathology, 23, 225–238.
Lansford, J. E., and Deater-Deckard, K. (2012). Childrearing discipline and violence in developing countries.
Child Development, 83, 62–75.
Lansford, J. E., and Dodge, K. A. (2008). Cultural norms for adult corporal punishment of children and societal
rates of endorsement and use of violence. Parenting: Science and Practice, 8, 257–270.
Lansford, J. E., Godwin, J., Uribe Tirado, L. M., Zelli, A., Al-Hassan, S. M., Bacchini, D., . . . Alampay, L. P.
(2015). Individual, family, and culture level contributions to child physical abuse and neglect: A longitudinal
study in nine countries. Development and Psychopathology, 27, 1417–1428.
Lansford, J. E., Malone, P. S., Dodge, K. A., Chang, L., Chaudhary, N., Tapanya, S., . . . Deater-Deckard, K. (2010).
Children’s perceptions of maternal hostility as a mediator of the link between discipline and children’s adjust-
ment in four countries. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 34, 452–461.
Lansford, J. E., Sharma, C., Malone, P. S., Woodlief, D., Dodge, K. A., Oburu, P., . . . Di Giunta, L. (2014). Cor-
poral punishment, maternal warmth, and child adjustment: A longitudinal study in eight countries. Journal of
Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 43, 670–685.
Lansford, J. E., Wager, L. B., Bates, J. E., Pettit, G. S., and Dodge, K. A. (2012). Forms of spanking and children’s
externalizing behaviors. Family Relations, 61, 224–236.
Larzelere, R. E. (2000). Child outcomes of nonabusive and customary physical punishment by parents: An
updated literature review. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 3, 199–221.
Larzelere, R. E., Kuhn, B. R., and Johnson, B. (2004). The intervention selection bias: An unrecognized confound
in intervention research. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 289–303.
Leeb, R. T., Bitsko, R. H., Merrick, M. T., and Armour, B. S. (2012). Does childhood disability increase risk for
child abuse and neglect? Journal of Mental Health Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 5, 4–31.
Lengua, L. J., and Kovacs, E. A. (2005). Bidirectional associations between temperament and parenting and the
prediction of adjustment problems in middle childhood. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 26, 21–38.
Lewis, C. C. (1981). The effects of parental firm control: A reinterpretation of the findings. Psychological Bulletin,
90, 547–563.
Lopez, N. L., Bonenberger, J. L., and Schneider, H. G. (2001). Parental disciplinary history, current levels of
empathy, and moral reasoning in young adults. North American Journal of Psychology, 3, 193–204.

87
 Jennifer E. Lansford

Lupien, S. J., McEwen, B. S., Gunnar, M. R., and Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on
the brain, behaviour and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 434–445.
Lytton, H. (1990). Child and parent effects in boys’ conduct disorder: A reinterpretation. Developmental Psychol-
ogy, 26, 683–697.
Lytton, H., and Romney, D. M. (1991). Parents’ differential socialization of boys and girls: A meta-analysis. Psy-
chological Bulletin, 109, 267–296.
Maccoby, E. E. (1984). Middle childhood in the context of the family. In W. A. Collins (Ed.), Development during
middle childhood: The years from six to twelve (pp. 184–239). Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences.
Maccoby, E. E., and Martin, J. A. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent–child interaction. In
P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.) and E. M. Hetherington (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology,Vol. 4: Socialization,
personality, and social development (4th Ed., pp. 1–101). New York, NY: Wiley.
MacKenzie, M. J., Nicklas, E., Brooks-Gunn, J., and Waldfogel, J. (2011). Who spanks infants and toddlers?
Evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study. Children and Youth Services Review, 33,
1364–1373.
McKinney, C., and Renk, K. (2008). Differential parenting between mothers and fathers: Implications for late
adolescents. Journal of Family Issues, 29, 806–827.
McLoyd, V. C., and Smith, J. (2002). Physical discipline and behavior problems in African American, European
American and Latino children: Emotional support as a moderator. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 64, 40–53.
Milner, J. S. (2000). Social information processing and child physical abuse: Theory and research. In D. J. Hansen
(Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation, Vol. 46, 1998: Motivation and child maltreatment (pp. 39–84). Lincoln,
NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Morsbach, S. K., and Prinz, R. J. (2006). Understanding and improving the validity of self-report of parenting.
Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 9, 1–21.
Nisbett, R. E., and Cohen, D. (1996). Culture of honor: The psychology of violence in the South. Boulder, CO: West-
view Press.
Österman, K., Björkqvist, K., and Wahlbeck, K. (2014). Twenty-eight years after the complete ban on the physical
punishment of children in Finland: Trends and psychosocial concomitants. Aggressive Behavior, 40, 568–581.
Padilla-Walker, L. M. (2008). Domain-appropriateness of maternal discipline as a predictor of adolescents’ posi-
tive and negative outcomes. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 456–464.
Patrick, R. B., and Gibbs, J. C. (2012). Inductive discipline, parental expression of disappointed expectations, and
moral identity in adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 41, 973–983.
Patterson, G. R. (1982). Coercive family process. Eugene, OR: Castalia Press.
Patterson, G. R. (2002). The early development of coercive family process. In J. B. Reid, G. R. Patterson, and J.
Snyder (Eds.), Antisocial behavior in children and adolescents: A developmental analysis and model for intervention (pp.
25–44). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press.
Patterson, G. R., Capaldi, D., and Bank, L. (1991). An early starter model for predicting delinquency. In D. J.
Pepler and K. H. Rubin (Eds.), The development and treatment of childhood aggression (pp. 139–168). Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Patterson, G. R., Dishion, T. J., and Chamberlain, P. (1993). Outcomes and methodological issues relating to
treatment of antisocial children. In T. R. Giles (Ed.), Handbook of effective psychotherapy (pp. 43–88). New York,
NY: Plenum Press.
Perrin, R., Miller-Perrin, C., and Song, J. (2017). Changing attitudes about spanking using alternative biblical
interpretations. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 41, 514–522.
Pettit, G. S., Bates, J. E., and Dodge, K. A. (1997). Supportive parenting, ecological context, and children’s adjust-
ment: A seven-year longitudinal study. Child Development, 68, 908–923.
Pinderhughes, E. E., Dodge, K. A., Zelli, A., Bates, J. E., and Pettit, G. S. (2000). Discipline responses: Influences
of parents’ socioeconomic status, ethnicity, beliefs about parenting, stress, and cognitive-emotional processes.
Journal of Family Psychology, 14, 380–400.
Rebellon, C., and Straus, M. A. (2017). Corporal punishment and adult antisocial behavior: A comparison of
dyadic concordance types and an evaluation of mediating mechanisms in Asia, Europe, and North America.
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 41, 503–513.
Rodriguez, C. M. (2010). Personal contextual characteristics and cognitions: Predicting child abuse potential and
disciplinary style. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 25, 315–335.
Rohner, R. P. (2004). The parental “acceptance-rejection syndrome”: Universal correlates of perceived rejection.
American Psychologist, 59, 830–840.
Rohner, R. P., Bourque, S. L., and Elordi, C. A. (1996). Children’s perceptions of corporal punishment, caretaker
acceptance, and psychological adjustment in a poor, biracial southern community. Journal of Marriage and
Family, 58, 842–852.

88
 Parenting and Child Discipline

Rohner, R. P., Kean, K. J., and Cournoyer, D. E. (1991). Effects of corporal punishment, perceived caretaker
warmth, and cultural beliefs on the psychological adjustment of children in St. Kitts, West Indies. Journal of
Marriage and the Family, 53, 681–693.
Rohner, R. P., and Lansford, J. E. (2017). Deep structure of the human affectional system: Introduction to inter-
personal acceptance-rejection theory. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 9, 426–440.
Rudolph, K. D., Lansford, J. E., and Rodkin, P. (2017). Interpersonal theories of developmental psychopathology.
In D. Cicchetti (Ed.), Developmental psychopathology (pp. 243–311). New York, NY: Wiley.
Russa, M. B., and Rodriguez, C. M. (2010). Physical discipline, escalation, and child abuse potential: Psychometric
evidence for the Analog Parenting Task. Aggressive Behavior, 36, 251–260.
Ryan, R. M., Kalil, A., Ziol-Guest, K. M., and Padilla, C. (2016). Socioeconomic gaps in parents’ discipline strate-
gies from 1988 to 2011. Pediatrics, 138, e20160720.
Schaefer, E. S. (1959). A circumplex model for maternal behavior. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59,
226–335.
Sears, R. R., Maccoby, E. E., and Levin, H. (1957). Patterns of child rearing. Evanston, IL: Row Patterson and Co.
Skinner, B. F. (1938). Behavior of organisms. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Smetana, J. G. (1999). The role of parents in moral development: A social domain analysis. Journal of Moral Educa-
tion, 28, 311–321.
Socolar, R. R. S., Savage, E., and Evans, H. (2007). A longitudinal study of parental discipline of young children.
Southern Medical Journal, 100, 472–477.
Stacks, A. M., Oshio, T., Gerard, J., and Roe, J. (2009). The moderating effect of parental warmth on the asso-
ciation between spanking and child aggression: A longitudinal approach. Infant and Child Development, 18,
178–194.
Stalker, K., and McArthur, K. (2012). Child abuse, child protection and disabled children: A review of recent
research. Child Abuse Review, 21, 24–40.
Straus, M. A., and Fauchier, A. (2011). Manual for the Dimensions of Discipline Inventory (DDI). Durham, NH: Fam-
ily Research Laboratory, University of New Hampshire.
Straus, M. A., Hamby, S. L., Finkelhor, D., Moore, D. W., and Runyan, D. (1998). Identification of child maltreat-
ment with the Parent–child Conflict Tactics Scales: Development and psychometric data for a national sample
of American parents. Child Abuse and Neglect, 22, 249–270.
Straus, M. A., and Mouradian, V. E. (1998). Impulsive corporal punishment by mothers and antisocial behavior
and impulsiveness of children. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 16, 353–374.
Straus, M. A., and Stewart, J. H. (1999). Corporal punishment by American parents: National data on prevalence,
chronicity, severity, and duration, in relation to child and family characteristics. Clinical Child and Family Psy-
chology Review, 2, 55–70.
Symonds, P. M. (1939). The psychology of parent–child relationships. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Tein, J.-Y., Sandler, I. N., MacKinnon, D. P., and Wolchik, S. A. (2004). How did it work? Who did it work for?
Mediation in the context of a moderated prevention effect for children of divorce. Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology, 72, 617–624.
Tomoda, A., Suzuki, H., Rabi, K., Sheu, Y.-S., Polcari, A., and Teicher, M. H. (2009). Reduced prefrontal cortical
gray matter volume in young adults exposed to harsh punishment. NeuroImage, 47, T66–T71.
UNICEF. (2017). Standards for ECD parenting programs in low and middle income countries. New York, NY: UNICEF.
United Nations. (2017). Sustainable Development Goals: 17 goals to transform our world. Retrieved from www.
[Link]/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
Van Zeijl, J., Mesman, J., van IJzendoorn, M. H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., Juffer, F., Stolk, M. N., . . .
Alink, L. R. A. (2006). Attachment-based intervention for enhancing sensitive discipline in mothers of 1- to
3-year-old children at risk for externalizing behavior problems: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Con-
sulting and Clinical Psychology, 74, 994–1005.
Volling, B. L., Blandon, A. Y., and Gorvine, B. J. (2006). Maternal and paternal gentle guidance and young chil-
dren’s compliance from a within-family perspective. Journal of Family Psychology, 20, 514–525.
Wang, M., Xing, X., and Zhao, J. (2014). Intergenerational transmission of corporal punishment in China: The
moderating role of marital satisfaction and gender. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 42, 1263–1274.
Watson, J. B., and Watson, R. R. (1928). Psychological care of the infant and child. New York, NY: Norton.
Webster-Stratton, C. (1990). Enhancing the effectiveness of self-administered videotape parent training for fami-
lies with conduct-problem children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 18, 479–492.
Weisleder, P. (2011). Family interventions to prevent maltreatment of children with disabilities. Journal of Child
Neurology, 26, 1052–1053.
Weiss, B., Dodge, K. A., Bates, J. E., and Pettit, G. A. (1992). Some consequences of early harsh discipline: Child
aggression and a maladaptive social-information-processing style. Child Development, 63, 1321–1335.

89
 Jennifer E. Lansford

Westcott, H. L., and Jones, D. (1999). Annotation: The abuse of disabled children. Journal of Child Psychology and
Psychiatry, 40, 497–506.
Whipple, E. E., and Webster-Stratton, C. (1991). The role of parental stress in physically abusive families. Child
Abuse and Neglect, 15, 279–291.
Whittingham, K., Wee, D., Sanders, M., and Boyd, R. (2011). Responding to the challenges of parenting a child
with cerebral palsy: A focus group. Disability and Rehabilitation, 33, 1557–1567.
Yau, J., and Smetana, J. G. (2003). Conceptions of moral, social-conventional, and personal events among Chi-
nese preschoolers in Hong Kong. Child Development, 74, 647–658.
Ziegert, K. A. (1983). The Swedish prohibition of corporal punishment: A preliminary report. Journal of Marriage
and Family, 45, 917–926.
Zolotor, A. J., and Puzia, M. E. (2010). Bans against corporal punishment: A systematic review of the laws,
changes in attitudes and behaviors. Child Abuse Review, 19, 229–247.

90