Differences in Parents’ Attitudes Toward Spanking Across Socioeconomic Status and Region, 1986–2016

Caitlin T. Hines, Ariel Kalil and Rebecca M. Ryan ()
Additional contact information
Caitlin T. Hines: Georgetown University
Ariel Kalil: University of Chicago
Rebecca M. Ryan: Georgetown University

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2022, vol. 160, issue 1, No 4, 133-158

Abstract: Abstract This paper explores whether and how parents’ attitudes toward the spanking of children have changed over the last 30 years, a period when parents’ use of corporal punishment declined precipitously in the U.S. We compare these trends across parents’ socioeconomic status (SES) and region of the country to identify whether shifts in attitudes toward these practices parallel documented shifts in their use by SES and region. We draw data from the General Social Surveys (GSS) from 1986 through 2016, which asked respondents how much they agree children sometimes need “a good, hard spanking.” We compare responses among parents at the 80th (high-SES) and 20th (low-SES) percentiles of the income and education distributions, and between parents in southern versus non-southern states, controlling for child and parent age and parent gender. In non-southern regions, parents’ support for corporal punishment declined over time, especially among high-SES parents, whereas in the South parents’ support for corporal punishment remained stably high over time across the socioeconomic distribution. These findings imply a distinct cultural perspective on corporal punishment in the South, one that may help explain the disproportionate maintenance of the practice in schools and provide a potent target for policy and program interventions to reduce its use.

Keywords: Socioeconomic status; Region; Corporal punishment; Parental attitudes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-021-02803-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:160:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-021-02803-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-021-02803-7

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().