Child discipline and family decision-making

Abstract

Objectives are (1) to develop a utility-maximizing framework to guide the testing of hypotheses about the effectiveness of parental disciplinary norms in producing desirable child outcomes, and (2) to use the framework to test prior hypotheses and make further inferences about the effectiveness of parental methods of governance and communication in producing desired child outcomes. Factor analyses supported our major prior hypotheses concerning the existence of physical and non-physical forms of discipline, and also uncovered evidence of a third discipline dimension-emotional harshness. Findings support use of an optimization framework to examine parental discipline attitudes and a wide variety of related hypotheses about family behavior. © 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc.