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Experience of Parental Corporal Punishment in Childhood and Adolescence and its Effect on Punitiveness

  • CYCLE OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE
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Abstract

The family, as the primary instance of socialization, plays a key role in nurturing values and attitudes. Based on this notion, this paper looks at how parental corporal punishment in childhood and adolescence, as an expression of a strict, authoritarian upbringing, can influence punitiveness later in life. The results of a representative German sample using multivariate analyses show that individuals who were physically punished or abused by their parents during childhood or adolescence are more punitive than non-victims of parental violence. Based on these findings, the question of whether changing parenting styles might have implications at the macro-level of punitiveness is addressed.

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Notes

  1. Alternatively an ordered logit model was estimated with three groups based on the empirical distribution with cutting points on the 33rd and 66th percentile. In those ordered logit models, the assumption of parallel regression was violated for some variables (Long and Freese 2003). Therefore a binary logit model was chosen.

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  1. Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony, Hanover, Germany

    Stefanie Kemme, Michael Hanslmaier & Christian Pfeiffer

  2. Faculty of Law, Institute of Criminal Sciences, University of Hamburg, Rothenbaumchaussee 33, 20148, Hamburg, Germany

    Stefanie Kemme

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Correspondence to Stefanie Kemme.

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Kemme, S., Hanslmaier, M. & Pfeiffer, C. Experience of Parental Corporal Punishment in Childhood and Adolescence and its Effect on Punitiveness. J Fam Viol 29, 129–142 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-013-9564-3

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