Most parents who hit their children don’t believe it works. That is a striking finding to emerge from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), a global data collection effort covering dozens of low- and middle-income countries. When caregivers are asked whether violent punishment – shaking, spanking, hitting with a hard object, or beating with an implement – is necessary to raise a child properly, most disagree. Yet across low- and middle-income countries, the same parents report that 60 percent of children aged 1-14 experience violent punishment at home. The gap between what parents believe and what they do is not a moral failure. It is a policy problem – and one we know how to solve.
Our latest report on human capital, Building Human Capital Where it Matters: Homes, Neighborhoods, and Workplaces, shows that children build much of the skills and health they need for adult life at home. When that home environment includes violence, cognitive development and mental health suffer, a finding backed by studies across the globe. The damage can go surprisingly deep: some studies even find that the brains of children who experience physical punishment respond differently to images of fearful faces. In most countries, children’s math proficiency is lower when caregivers report using violent punishment (see Figure 1).
Behavior management advice
Why are parents doing this? Is this because parents think this is a good way of disciplining their children? The MICS data reveal that in most countries, more than half of caregivers report using violent punishment to discipline their children. Yet, when asked whether physical punishment is necessary to raise a child properly, most disagree (see Figure 2). The answer is that knowing and doing are different things, as anyone who has ever skipped the gym despite good intentions understands. Parents need help translating their beliefs into behavior, and there is a large evidence base on programs that coach parents on everyday habits such as stimulation, play, and consistent and non-violent discipline that children need to thrive. A facilitator might even sit with a parent and a child and demonstrate these principles. Not only do these programs reduce violent punishment, they can put children on an entirely different developmental trajectory when it comes to earnings and mental health as adults.
Money
Data from higher-income contexts suggest that money matters too. Research on parenting styles across OECD countries finds that “authoritarian” parenting style, including violent punishment. becomes more prevalent in more unequal societies with weaker safety nets, where the stakes of success and failure are higher. There are also some natural experiments that permit a more causal interpretation between economic circumstance and the use of violent punishment. One study focuses on the state of Alaska, where each additional $1,000 from a universal cash transfer program reduced child abuse by 30 percent and child mortality by age 5 by 30 percent.
While data suggests that the prevalence of violence towards children is still high in many low- and middle-income countries, the evidence on solutions points in two directions: give parents better tools and reduce the economic pressures that make the home a harder place to be.
Counselling sessions that show parents other forms of behavior management do decrease violence and at the same time foster the cognitive and social-emotional skills that children need to succeed in the labor market. And social safety nets may operate on multiple levels. They decrease material hardship and thus the stress of parents in the home. Their implications for the size of income-gaps in the population may also alter the style that parents adopt to raise their children.
Policymakers in low- and middle-income countries should treat the home environment with the same seriousness they bring to schools and health clinics. Children’s brains, and their futures, are being shaped there too.
READ MORE: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/investinpeople/violent-punishment-at-home-how-to-help-parents-stop-it
