Mother’s discipline practices and social norms of early development

Abstract

The Theory of Planned Behavior suggests that parents’ perceived social norms and expectations regarding corporal punishment (CP) use might be linked to their attitudes and disciplinary choices. Research supports this prediction as so perceived norms regarding CP use are associated with parents’ attitudes. The focus of this study is mothers' discipline practice and its relation to perceived social norms of early childhood parenting. Other studies from Serbia show the first use of CP is around the child’s second year. Therefore, early childhood is a high time for prevention attempts toward changing parents’ attitudes and practices. The sample includes 413 mothers of 18-35 months old children from six Serbian municipalities. This research is a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodological approach. Mothers have reported which of 13 discipline practices, they used in the last month (for example, explaining, yelling, spanking, shaking) when children misbehave. Also, after a focus group with parents, we identified social norms of parenting practice during early development. A ten-items fivedegree scale was constructed to assess mothers’ perceived social norms of other parents and their agreement with them. Cluster analysis (Ward’s method, squared Euclidean distance) shows three existing clusters that fit with the data study of discipline practices. Chi-square analysis was used to define the extracted group. The first group of mothers used only explanations as discipline practice in the situation of misbehaving. Most of the respondents in the second group agreed with the statement that their child is too little for any form of discipline (64% compared to 6-3% in other groups). Finally, the third group used explanation but also inclined more than others toward violent verbal, such as yelling (93%) and physical disciplining, such as spanking (45%). These mothers perceived two descriptive norms as more available in their surrounding compared to the others: 1. the belief that corporal punishment is necessary for disciplining two-three years old children (F(2, 392) = 12.47, p = .000, Sheffe test, p < .01) and 2. The belief that babies should be left to cry out, to avoid spoiling them F(2, 393) = 7.77, p = .000, Sheffe test, p < .01). Participants from the second group have stronger belifes that the mother's role is mostly to take care of the baby while fathers should dedicate themselves to work (F(2, 378) = 6.19, p = .002, Sheffe test, p < .01) and that being a good mother mean being committed completely to a child (F(2, 378) = 6.19, p = .002, Sheffe test, p < .,01). Despite the body of research pointing to the negative side of CP, our results reveal that a group of mothers start to use this form of discipline during a child’s early development. Their behaviour is supported by social norms from the surroundings. The study highlighted that changing toward less violent discipline practices should include debagging the false beliefs about child-rearing behaviour.