Sex differences in the reciprocal relationships between mild and severe corporal punishment and children's internalizing problem behavior in a Chinese sample

a r t i c l e i n f o The study aimed to investigate the sex differences in the reciprocal relations between parental corporal punishment and child internalizing problem behavior in China. Four hundred fifty-four Chinese elementary school-age children completed measures of their parental corporal punishment toward them and their own internalizing problem behavior at two time points, 6 months apart. Structural equation modeling revealed that both parental mild and severe corporal punishment significantly predicted child internalizing problem behavior for girls, but only parental severe corporal punishment marginally predicted child internal-izing problem behavior for boys; child internalizing problem behavior predicted both mild and severe corporal punishment for boys but not for girls. The findings highlight the important role of severity of corporal punishment and child sex in understanding the relations between parental corporal punishment and child internalizing problem behavior and have implications for the intervention efforts aimed at reducing child internalizing symptoms or parental corporal punishment in China. Corporal punishment (i.e., spanking the bottom with the bare hand or hitting with a hard object) is a commonly used strategy of disciplining children by parents (Straus & Stewart 1999; Tang, 2006). A large body of research indicates that corporal punishment is associated with subsequent negative child outcomes. Yet most of the research has concentrated on child externalizing issues, suggesting that corporal punishment leads to aggressive and delin-, whereas the association of corporal punishment with child internalizing problem behavior or emotional difficulties remains less apparent in the literature. Although less researched, several studies have linked parental corporal punishment on adolescent samples, indicated that maternal corporal punishment during childhood was associated with later increased depression. Likewise , Rubin and Mills (1990) presented 121 mothers of 4-year olds with descriptions of hypothetical incidents of peer-directed social withdrawal and asked what they would do about these behaviors. Results indicated that mothers of withdrawn-internalizing children would react to such maladaptive behavior more often in coercive, high power assertive ways than mothers of normal children. Taken together, these studies reviewed above provided the evidence for unidirectional influence between parental corporal punishment and child internalizing problem behavior. It is important to note, however, several theoretical models on parent–child interaction posit that children and their parents mutually influence one another across time, and the bidirectional nature of parent– child relationships has received empirical support from a growing body of research, particularly in regard to parental harsh discipline …