Abstract
This chapter uses the third sweep of the International Self-Report Delinquency study (ISRD3) to explore the prevalence and predictors of parental violence against children. Using the 27 countries in the 2017 dataset of ISRD3, it shows very wide variations across country. Clear correlations also emerged across country between the prevalence of parental physical punishment and that of more serious physical abuse. The hypothesized relationships between parental use of violence and poverty and deprivation (measured by the Human Development Index) were not initially found. However, migrant status was clearly a significant predictor, and when this was taken into account in analysis, a correlation between parental violence and HDI scores becomes visible. The chapter used data from a subproject of ISRD3, Understanding and Preventing Youth Crime (UPYC), to test different hypotheses for the higher rates of parental violence. Support was found both for the importation hypothesis and the deprivation hypothesis. It was expected that the predictive effect of migrant status would disappear when deprivation variables were included in the analysis. However, controlling for deprivation attenuated the relationship between migrant status and use of parental violence but did not make it disappear completely—offering some support for both competing hypotheses.
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Notes
- 1.
For updates, see http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/.
- 2.
Data have been published by the United Nations Development Programme (2015).
- 3.
The questionnaire item reads: “Has your mother or father (or your stepmother or stepfather) ever hit, slapped or shoved you? (Include also times when this was punishment for something you had done.) Has this ever happened to you? [If yes] How often has this happened to you in the last 12 months?”
- 4.
The label is based on the definition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report (Leeb, Paulozzi, Melanson, Simon, & Arias, 2008, p. 14; see also Gilbert et al., 2009, p. 69). The questionnaire item reads: “Has your mother or father (or your stepmother or stepfather) ever hit you with an object, punched or kicked you forcefully or beat you up? (Include also times when this was punishment for something you had done.) Has this ever happened to you? [If yes] How often has this happened to you in the last 12 months?”
- 5.
All analyses in this chapter use weighted data and robust standard errors, taking the clustering of students into school classes into account. If the error bars of two 95% confidence intervals (CI) overlap by not more than half of the average arm length, the difference of point estimates (such as reporting rates) can be considered to be statistically significant at p < 0.05 (see Cumming & Finch, 2005). However, this holds only for single comparisons, not for multiple comparisons and not for correlated data such as matched data or repeated measures.
- 6.
Grade 9 students only.
- 7.
The values of HDI are centred at the total mean and standardized by two standard deviations in order to make the size of the odds ratio compatible to the effects of the dichotomous dummy variables of migration status (see Gelman, 2008).
- 8.
The US questionnaire asked about racial and ethnic identification as follows: “Do you think of yourself as (1) White (not Spanish/Hispanic/Latino), (2) Black or African American, (3) American Indian or Alaska Native, (4) Asian, (5) Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, (6) White Spanish/Hispanic/Latino, (7) Non-White Spanish/Hispanic/Latino or (8) Other?” This is consistent with common use by the US census. Note that in the current analysis, white Spanish students are treated as distinct from those students who identified themselves as simply “white”.
- 9.
Question “How well off is your family, compared to others” with seven response categories ranging from “much worse off” to “much better off”. For the analyses the values have been centred and divided by two standard deviations to make the exponentiated regression coefficients (odds ratios) compatible to coefficients of dichotomous variables (Gelman, 2008).
- 10.
Because the models predict parental violence, only data of respondents living in two (step)parent or single-parent families were analysed.
- 11.
Neighbourhood incivilities is an item mean score of five 4-point Likert items probing the existence of incivilities in the neighbourhood (“lot of crime”, “lot of drug selling”, “lot of fighting”, “lot of empty and abandoned buildings”, “lot of graffiti”); see ISRD3 Working Group (2013). The scores have been centred and divided by two standard deviations to make the exponentiated regression coefficients (odds ratios) compatible to coefficients of dichotomous variables (Gelman, 2008).
- 12.
Strictly speaking, the proportion of victimized to non-victimized students is significantly higher among juveniles with a migration background as compared to native juveniles. Note that the odds ratios of the reduced model are rescaled to make them compatible to the odds ratios of the full model by using the KHB approach (Kohler, Karlson, & Holm, 2011)—this solves the problem of comparing regression coefficients of hierarchically nested nonlinear models (Mood, 2010).
- 13.
The effect of the reduced model is the rescaled total effect of the predictor of interest (here: migrant background), the effect of the full model is its direct effect or the effect unconfounded by the variables added to the model, and the difference between rescaled total and direct effect is the indirect effect of the predictor of interest or a measure of confounding by the variables added. The difference itself is not confounded by rescaling as it would be when simply comparing coefficients of hierarchically nested nonlinear probability models (see Karlson, Holm, & Breen, 2010; Mood, 2010). Note that the odds ratio in the row “difference” is the exponentiated difference of the regression coefficients of the restricted and the full model, not the difference of their corresponding odds ratios.
- 14.
Note, however, that the results reported in this section may not be extrapolated to the risks of children because we are only considering physical abuse in the last year. The life-time prevalence of physical abuse in these five countries is about 30% higher: France 8.1 vs. 5.6%, Germany 6.1 vs. 4.2%, the Netherlands 8.3 v. 5.3%, the UK 5.2 vs. 3.6% and the USA 14.6 vs. 11.2%.
- 15.
Again, one should note that this may not be extrapolated to the situation of children because here we only consider physical abuse experienced in the last year.
- 16.
Elliott and Urquiza (2006) have made a strong argument that the issue of the role of ethnicity and culture in sexual and physical abuse in the USA is complex and in need of additional study. This is also true for other national contexts.
- 17.
In this context we remind the reader that the UPYC samples are only representative for selected cities in the five countries, not for the countries as such.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the five funding councils of France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA, who made an award for this work under the Open Research Area programme. The first author’s institution was supported by the German Science Foundation (DFG): EN 490/1-1.
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Enzmann, D., Kammigan, I. (2018). Parental Violence, Deprivation and Migrant Background. In: Roché, S., Hough, M. (eds) Minority Youth and Social Integration. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89462-1_4
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