Citation

Alampay LP, Godwin J, Lansford JE, Oburu P, Bornstein MH, Chang L, Deater-Deckard K, Rothenberg WA, Malone PS, Skinner AT, Pastorelli C, Sorbring E, Steinberg L, Tapanya S, Uribe Tirado LM, Yotanyamaneewong S, Al-Hassan SM, Bacchini D, Di Giunta L, Dodge KA, Gurdal S. Child Maltreat. 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/10775595211036401

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

We examined whether a policy banning corporal punishment enacted in Kenya in 2010 is associated with changes in Kenyan caregivers' use of corporal punishment and beliefs in its effectiveness and normativeness, and compared to caregivers in six countries without bans in the same period. Using a longitudinal study with six waves of panel data (2008-2016), mothers (N = 1086) in Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Thailand, and United States reported household use of corporal punishment and beliefs about its effectiveness and normativeness. Random intercept models and multi-group piecewise growth curve models indicated that the proportion of corporal punishment behaviors used by the Kenyan caregivers decreased post-ban at a significantly different rate compared to the caregivers in other countries in the same period. Beliefs of effectiveness of corporal punishment were declining among the caregivers in all sites, whereas the Kenyan mothers reported increasing perceptions of normativeness of corporal punishment post-ban, different from the other sites. While other contributing factors cannot be ruled out, our natural experiment suggests that corporal punishment decreased after a national ban, a shift that was not evident in sites without bans in the same period.

Language: en

Keywords

child maltreatment; parenting; longitudinal research; legal aspects