Parents' and preschool children's choices of disciplinary childrearing methods

JOURNAL OF APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL PSlCHOLOGY 3 167-176

Parents’ and Preschool Children’s

Choices of Disciplinary

Childrearing Methods*

DAVID A. WOLFE The University of Western Ontario

London. Canada

ALAN KATELL Nova University

Ft. Lauderdale. Florida

RONALD S. DRABMAN The University of Mississippi Medical Center

Jackson. MS

Forty preschoolers individually were shown o videotope containing six

30-second scenes depicting common parent/child conflicts. The children were

asked to tell the experimenter what they would do if they were the parent on the

tape, and what their own parents would do if this happened at home. In odd&on,

15 mothers of these children were selected randomly to view the same scenes and

to indicate their choice of conflict resolution methods. Taped responses of parents and children were then coded (IS verbal/physical coercion or no coercion. Results

indicated that preschoolers tended to choose disciplinary actions in accordance

with their perceptions of their parents’ monner of dealing with the same situation,

and also reveoled o high congruence between porent and child on consequences for difcipline. The implications of these findings ore discussed in relation to the development of childrearing methods ot on eorly age ond the intergenerational

transmission of family violence.

Knowledge of social learning, cognitive development, and modeling effects would suggest that the reciprocal relationship between child and parent in a well- functioning family would foster the child’s knowledge and expectations of appro-

*This research was conducted while the first and second authors were Residents in Clinical Psychology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi. We wish to thank

the staff of the Broadmoor Preschool, Jackson, MS., for their assistance and cooperation throughout this study. Requests for reprints should be sent to the first author c/o Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A X2

167

168 WOLFE, KATELL, AND DRABMAN

priate and effective childrearing methods at a very young age. Just as one would expect a child who has been exposed to parental violence to behave aggressively towards others in similar situations, a child who is handled by his/her caregiver in a consistent, firm, and non-aggressive manner would be likely to behave similarly towards others.

The widely held belief that child maltreatment is transmitted across genera- tions is predicated on the assumption that extreme and prolonged exposure to harsh, punitive disciplinary methods leads to a greater propensity for the child- victim to become parent-perpetrator (Silver, Dublin, & Lourie, 1969; Steele & Pollock, 1974). Violence as a problem-solving method may be learned in a family setting where physical force and coercion are used to control interactions between family members (Steinmetz, 1977). A great deal of research has been conducted which supports the hypothesis that the physically punitive parent establishes a model of aggressive behavior by sanctioning aggression and modeling aggressive behaviors for the child (e.g., Hoffman, 1960; Bandura & Walters, 1963; Fairchild & Erwin, 1977). The hypothesis supported by this research states that “the greater the extent to which physical violence is used on a child, the greater the chance that he or she will use violence on other family members as an adult” (Carroll, 1977, p. 291). Moreover, theories of social cognition emphasize that aggressive behavior modeled by the parent teaches children that such behavior is appropriate (i.e., “normal”), fails to provide the child with the cognitive ability to consider moral implications of aggression, and may negatively affect the child’s development of a self-perspective (Herzberger, 1981). Findings from studies of children from dis- turbed and violent families, (e.g., Patterson, 1976; Burgess & Conger, 1978), as well as laboratory analog experiments (Passman & Mulhem, 1977) support these theoretical propositions, and indicate that intense and prolonged parental aggression increases the probability of producing aggressive and antisocial behavior and decrements in social competence in the child (Barahal, Waterman, & Martin, 1981; George & Main, 1979).

Correlational and experimental findings indicate overall that family members influence one another’s choice of problem-solving and interpersonal strate- gies over time and, presumably, such interactional patterns may be modifiable during the child’s early development (Bell & Harper, 1977; Hoffman, 1979). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between parent’s and child’s choice of childrearing methods in well-functioning families with preschool children who do not display behavioral or emotional problems. The gen- eral hypothesis was that these children who have not been exposed to aggressive parental models and who do not emit problem behaviors would choose disciplinary tactics in analog (videotaped) situations which are similar to those used by their own parents. In particular, the following hypotheses were addressed: (1) the child’s choice of discipline techniques would be related to their perceptions of their own parent’s behavior in the same situation; (2) the child’s choice of disci-

CHILDREN’S CHOICES 169

plinary techniques would be strongly related to their own parent’s choice of techniques when the same analog situations are presented to both family members. The implications of these findings upon the development of childrearing methods in young children were of primary interest in the current investigation.

METHOD

Subjects

Forty subjects (18 females and 22 males) ranging in age from 4 to 6 years old were randomly selected from a local preschool program. The intellectual and physical development of this sample of children was above average, due in part to the school’s acceptance criteria. These children were from stable homes (i.e., both parents were present in the home in all but two families) and the occupations of the fathers were primarily professional and managerial positions. Six mothers also worked full-time jobs.

The interviewer/experimenter was a 28-year-old clinical psychology resi- dent who had experience with young children. He was assisted by two female school personnel who were familiar to the children.

Stimulus Materials

Six 30-second videotaped scenes of parent/child interaction were recorded on color videocassette in a home setting. In three separate sequences, an adult male actor portrayed a father interacting with his son (a 7-year-old child actor) during a conflict situation. In the other three sequences an adult female actor portrayed a mother having conflicts with her daughter (a 4%year-old actress). Each of the six scenes depicted common parent/child conflicts. The father/son conflicts were:

1. child refused to eat supper, played with his food, and ignored the father’s commands;

2. child refused to go to bed, whined and complained; 3. child lied to the father about his misbehavior at school, which the father

was already aware of;

The mother/daughter conflicts were:

4. child refused to go to the doctor’s office for a shot; 5. child refused to go to bed and had a loud temper tantrum; 6. child demanded mother’s attention, disrupted her reading by throwing

toys.


Each of the conflict situations were designed to be easily recognized as a conflict by the young children in the study. Each scene began with a clearly stated request by the parent-actor to the child-actor, which was ignored or disobeyed by the child. The parent then responded by raising his/her voice and repeating the command. This second command was also defied by the child, who responded with arguments and/or temper tantrums. The tape ended with the scene unresolved; the parent-actor was clearly annoyed by the conflict, but did not threaten the child or attempt to resolve the conflict on the tape. In this manner, the scenes depicted brief, recognizable conflicts which escalated towards parental an- ger and frustration, yet remained unresolved in order to elicit a solution from the subject viewing the tape.

These six conflict scenes were chosen from twelve 1% minute scenarios of typical parent/child interaction in the home, using adult and child actors. In an earlier study, Wolfe, Fairbank, Kelly, and Bradlyn (in press) had shown these tapes to abusive and non-abusive mothers who rated the 12 scenes as “stressful,” “somewhat stressful” or “not stressful.” The six scenes chosen for the present study were rated “stressful” by these mothers. In addition, these mothers had reported that the scenes were realistic representations of conflicts which occur fre- quently in their home.

Procedure

The study was conducted with the children in a familiar room at the preschool (3.5 x 4 meters). The experimenter was introduced to the child by a familiar staff per- son, and he/she was told that they were going to watch TV and talk about what they saw. Each child was brought to the room and was seated facing a television monitor at a distance of 1.6 meters. The experimenter was seated adjacent to the child, in proximity to the television controls. A portable cassette tape recorder was on the floor next to the experimenter, and the child was introduced to the task by talking into the recorder and becoming familiar with the setting. Two or 3 minutes were spent allowing the child to adjust to the setting and to become familiar with the video and tape recorder. Subsequently, the experimenter explained to the child that he/she was going to watch some short TV shows with parents and kids, and some questions would follow.

After the child viewed each scene, he/she was asked: Ql:“What did you see on the TV?” (If the child failed to recognize a conflict, the response for that scene was discounted). 42: “What would you do ifyou were the mommy/daddy and this happened with your child?” Q3: “What would your mommy/daddy do if this happened at home?” Q4: “Do you think the little boy/girl on the TV will do this anymore?” The child’s responses to each scene were tape recorded. The same questions were repeated for all six scenes, and all children were asked to respond to both the father/son and mother/daughter situations.


Fifteen mothers were randomly selected to view the videotape.’ These mothers were shown the same conflict scenes, and their responses to Q2 (What would you do in this situation?) were recorded. They responded for their husbands in the scenes involving father/son conflict (i.e., What would your husband do?). Parent data from this analog assessment were correlated with their child’s response to obtain an estimate of the strength of relationship between parent’s and child’s choice of childrearing methods.

Responses to the video scenes were coded by two research assistants. Ql: (What did you see, i.e., does S recognize a problem?) and 44: (Will the child on the TV do this anymore?) were coded as either Yes or No. For each scene, responses to Q2 and 43 (What would you do; what would your mommy/daddy do?) were coded as either: a) verbal or physical coercion with specific punishers, (e.g., “spank him”, “grab him”, “yell at him”, “tell him I’m going to spank him”, etc.); or b) no coercive methods specified (e.g., “send him to his room”, “tell him he can’t watch TV,” “talk to him, ” “tell him to do it”). No coercion was coded if no explicit mention was made of any punitive means of conflict resolution. The behaviors included in each category (coercive and non-coercive) were based upon judgments of 53 university students enrolled in a child development class. In the event a child’s response was unique to either category, that response was not coded (this occurred on only four occasions); furthermore, if a child responded with both a coercive and non-coercive response (e.g., “Yell and send him to his room;” “ spank him unless it was the first time,” etc.), which was left unclarified, the response was coded as coercive (this occurred on eight occasions). Interrater agreement for the coding procedure was conducted on 42% of the responses by the percentage agreement formula for categorical data (Hartmann, 1977), which yielded agreement scores of 96% (physical or verbal coercion) and 91% (no coercion).

RESULTS

Several preliminary analyses were conducted to determine the child’s degree of consistency when answering for him/herself or for the parent, and to determine which scenes may have produced more coercive responses from the child. These analyses were based upon 220 responses rather than the possible 240 (6 scenes X

40 children), since there were 20 failures to recognize a conflict scene (involving 9 different children) and no response was recorded.

When a child was responding for him/herself (that is, What would you do if you were the mommy/daddy?), their choices of disciplinary methods did not re-

‘Data from parents of all 40 children could not be obtained due to time restriction at the

preschool.


veal a repetitious, identical approach to each new situation. Only 28% of the children responded in an identical (consistent) manner (either coercive or non- coercive) for each new scene, and 17% were identical for 5 of the 6 scenes. The majority responded in a similar manner to only 4 of the 6 scenes (53%), or 3 of the 6 scenes (2%).

When a child was responding for his/her parent (that is, What would your mommy do?), more consistency in choice of disciplinary methods was found. For this question, 33% of the children responded in an identical manner for each scene, and 18% were consistent across 5 of the 6 scenes. The remaining children responded in a similar manner to 4 of the 6 scenes (36%) or 3 of the 6 scenes (7%).

The number and percentage of total coercive responses reported by the children when answering for themselves or their parent are shown in Table 1 for each scene. These figures suggest that certain conflict situations were more likely to produce a coercive response from a child than other situations. The highest percentage of coercive responses reported by the child both as “self” and as “parent” was seen in Scenes 2, 5, and 6. These three scenes contained a greater number of non-compliant child behavior and loud arguments, when rated post hoc by two observers (mean number of non-compliant plus argumentative behaviors, scenes 2, 5, and 6 = 7.6; scenes 1, 3, and 4 = 5.0).

To test the hypothesis that children’s responses resemble the discipline practices of their parents, each child’s response to Q2 was compared to their prediction of their own parent’s response (Q3) for each scene. Significantphi coefficient correlations were found between the child’s choice of coercive/non-coercive consequences and their prediction of their parents’ behavior. When predicting the

TABLE 1

Number and percentage of total coercive responses for each conflict scene, reported by child as “self” or “parent’

SELF PARENT

Total coercive Total coercive

TYPE OF CONFLICT responses = 108 responses = 85

Scene # (parent/child) N % N %

1 refused to eat 9 (8) 11 (13) (father/son)

2 refused to to bed go 22 (20) 16 (19) (father/son)

3 lying about misbehavior 15 (14) 9 (11) (father/son)

4 refused to to doctor go 19 (18) 14 (16) (mother/daughter)

5 refused to to bed, tantrum go 24 18 (21) 6 demanding attention, throwing 19 17 (20)

toys (mother/dauahter)


father’s behavior (scenes 1, 2, and 3) these correlations were phi = .5 1, .44, and .64 respectively, and when predicting the mother’s behavior (scenes 4,5 & 6) correlations were phi = .62, .54, and .40 respectively (Chi-square transformations were significant at p < .05 for all six scenes).

Subsequent to the above findings, analyses were conducted for boys (N = 22) during father/son conflict (scenes l-3) and for girsls (N = 18) during mother/daughter conflict (scenes 4-6) to investigate the congruence between the children’s responses when answering for the same-sex parent. For boys, significant correlational relationships between choice of consequence and prediction of father’s consequences were indicated in scenes 1 and 2 (phi = .52 & .73,p < .05), whereas scene 3 was nonsignificant @hi = .06, ns). Similar results for girls were found: significant correlations were found for scenes 4 and 5, phi = .57 and .53, p < .05), and scene 6 was nonsignificant (phi = .lO, ns). Boys’ choice of coercive consequences for scenes involving father/son conflict did not differ greatly from the girls’ choice of coercion for scenes of

mother/daughter conflict (boys = 48%, 59%, & 61% coercive responses, vs. girls = 50%, 73%, & 59%).

Parent and child raw data responses to the six videotaped scenes for the sample of 15 parent/child dyads are shown in Table 2. Phi coefficient correlations indicated that the parent and the child showed strong agreement for each of the scenes (Scene No.1: phi = .65; No.2 = .53; No.3 = .60; No.4 = .60; No.5 = .49; No.6 = .46, all significant at p < .05). Investigation of the raw data from these parent/child comparisons (Table 2) reveals a slightly higher number of parent/child agreements on the choice of coercive discipline methods than on the choice of non-coercive methods.

TABLE 2

Raw data far parent (N = 15) and child agreements on choice of coercive or nor+coercive consequences for each scene

Scene Number

Choice of Consequence 1 2 3 4 5 6

Coercive agreement a 9 7 7 5 6 Nomoercive agreement (Disagreements) cf , d)

The children responded to Q4 (“Do you think the child will do this anymore?“) by indicating that the conflict would not continue further (15 1, or 75%, of the 200 total coercive responses). For the remaining responses (N = 49) in which the subjects indicated that the child in the scene would continue to misbe- have, 59% (N = 20) of these conclusions followed a coercive solution reported by the subject when answering for him/herself, and 41% (N = 20) followed a non-coercive solution.


DISCUSSION

Preschoolers in this study chose disciplinary actions in accordance with their perceptions of their parents’ manner of dealing with the same situation. Also, the present findings revealed a high congruence between parent and child on consequences for discipline during specific childrearing situations. These data suggest that disciplinary childrearing methods may be learned by children at a very young age, and are related to the childrearing patterns in the home. In accordance with social learning theory (Bandura, 1973) and cognitive development theory (Hoffman, 1979), these findings provide empirical support for the reciprocal relationship between parent and child and the child’s development of moral behavior in the family context.

Based on the intra-individual findings over the six scenes, it appears that these preschoolers were not responding to the conflicts in a socially desirable or standard response style. Instead, these data suggest that they based their choices of discipline upon the situation-specific cues presented on the videotape. Scenes involving loud arguments and overt noncompliance on the part of the child were more likely to result in a coercive solution from the subject rather than those in which less oppositional behavior was displayed, although these results could not be statistically analyzed due to small sample size.

Presumably, children at this young age were not actually “evaluating” their parents choice of discipline methods, but rather were imitating their parents’ typical behavior. In accordance with cognitive development research (cf. Hoffman, 1979), children may adopt their parents’ behavior in situations which they recognize and understand, and through the process develop their ability to make moral judgments and to evaluate their behavior. The analyses of strength of relationship between same-sex parent and child suggest no clear pattern of sex differentiation although conclusions are limited due to the relatively small samples of male and female children. Similarly, an analysis of males’ and females’ responses to 42 alone revealed that neither sex was more coercive than the other when playing the same-sex parent role. It is also interesting that these preschoolers reported most often that the child on the videotape would stop misbehaving, which perhaps re- flects the typical course of events they have been exposed to in their families.

The present study addressed the issue of the development of childrearing patterns in normal families, and therefore the assumption that family violence patterns may also be learned by young children was not directly investigated. Based on the current findings, however, some meaningful comparisons can be made. Preschool children may learn to predict their parents’ choice of disciplinary action in specific situations with a fair degree of accuracy, through repeated exposure to a variety of conflict situations. These children then choose to perform in the same manner as their parents would under similar circumstances. Extrapolating these results to families in which coercive conflict resolution tactics are more commonly employed would suggest that children in more violent families may also choose


childrearing methods which are congruent with those used by their parents. Al- though correlational data cannot confirm these hypotheses, they provide an estimate of the strength of this relationship between parents’ and child’s choice of disciplinary methods.

The current study provides some direction for the continued investigation of the early development of childrearing patterns. Apparently, children develop perceptions of their parents’ situation-specific disciplinary methods at a very young age which are influential in their understanding and subsequent preference towards related disciplinary decisions. This relationship between parent and child disciplinary methods has important implications for the development of childrearing methods in children. Children and youth who respond coercively to analog childrearing situations may benefit from training in alternative conflict resolution methods, followed by rehearsal of these skills in simulated family situations. Future research on the modification of coercive disciplinary patterns with children may assist efforts to reduce the widespread usage of harsh methods of child management and family violence which appear to be transmitted from parent to child.

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Parents' and preschool children's choices of disciplinary childrearing methods