Abstract
According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 19, “children have the right to be protected from being hurt and mistreated, physically or mentally.” The 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goal 16 target 16.2 (“end abuse and violence against children”) aims toward the elimination of corporal punishment of children. Physical punishment by parents (and others) is banned by law in a growing number of countries. This chapter explores if girls are more affected by the violent family context than boys, and if countries where corporal punishment is banned do have lower level of parental maltreatment of children. We analyze data from Belgium, Denmark, Italy, and the USA collected among 12–16 year-old adolescents (n = 10,216) as part of the third sweep of the International Self-Report Delinquency survey (ISRD3) to answer the question of whether the association between troubled family life, use of violence by parents, attachment to parents, and subjective wellbeing (happiness) is different for girls than for boys, and whether it is contingent on national context. The findings suggest that gender and national context indeed do matter. We conclude the chapter with an expression of two concerns: about the universal implementation of Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child across different national contexts, and, likewise, about the challenge of promoting a Culture of Lawfulness so the children of the next generation will be happier than the present one.
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Notes
- 1.
For a comprehensive overview of the norms and standards and other intergovernmental work on violence against women, see https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/global-norms-and-standards.
- 2.
- 3.
Physical discipline, also known as corporal punishment, refers to “any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light.”
It includes acts such as kicking, pinching, spanking, shaking or throwing children, hitting them with a hand or implement (such as a whip, stick, belt, shoe or wooden spoon) or forcing them to ingest something. Violent psychological discipline involves the use of verbal aggression, threats, intimidation, denigration, ridicule, guilt, humiliation, withdrawal of love or emotional manipulation to control children.
- 4.
ISRD1 was carried out in 1991–1992 and ISRD2 in 2006–2008.
- 5.
For more information, see www.northeastern.edu/isrd/.
- 6.
There is one exception: in Table 3, we make use of findings for the 27 countries for which full data are currently available and the total sample approaches 63,000 young people.
- 7.
Transforming the original scale into POMPs (Percentage of Maximum Possible Scores) ranging from 0 to 100, makes it easier to compare between differently-scaled variables (Cohen et al. 1999).
- 8.
Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is a statistical method of analysis that estimates the relationship between one or more independent variables and a dependent variable. We follow the common recommendation that in terms of providing the clearest interpretation of interaction terms and reliable/stable coefficients, OLS is the currently best way to analyze interactions.
- 9.
The interaction graph presents the mean predicted scores at the three levels of parental violence and for the boys and the girls resulting from a regression. We plug in the parental violence (1, 2, or 3) and the gender values (1 or 0) to get the predicted happiness value. For example, you “select” the cases of 1 in for the male variable and 2-say-for parental violence and calculate the mean predictions of those cases; then the same thing for the next: 0 for the male variable and 2 for the parental violence and calculate the mean predictions of those cases, and so on for the other four situations. The six points in the graph are the means of those predictions.
- 10.
Please note that the interaction graphs do not include the larger number of variables of the OLS models. However, the beta coefficient of 0.73*** for the interaction parental violence*gender in the full model (Table 4) provides additional evidence for the differential gender impact of parental violence on happiness.
- 11.
It should be noted that the interpretation of the magnitude of the effect of parental violence needs to be approached with caution, since the OLS models do include interaction terms involving parental violence. In the view of some, the interpretation of lower order terms in the presence of an interaction term is complex and is generally avoided (Braumoeller 2004).
- 12.
Considering that the USA is known as an exceptionally violent country (compared to most European countries) with a high level of gun-related violence including mass shootings, suicides, and gang-related violence), it is actually surprising that the level of parental violence in the current study was only marginally higher in the US sample than in the other three samples. This likely reflects the composition of the sample and the method of data collection (school-based self-report surveys).
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Marshall, I.H., Wills, C., Marshall, C.E. (2021). Parents Who Hit, Troubled Families, and Children’s Happiness: Do Gender and National Context Make a Difference?. In: Kury, H., Redo, S. (eds) Crime Prevention and Justice in 2030. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56227-4_10
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