Harsh Parenting Practices

Speyer, Hang, Hall & Murray (2022) published “The role of harsh parenting practices in early- to middle-childhood socioemotional development: An examination in the Millennium Cohort Study” in Child Development. I am editing their text for brevity. They begin by observing that, “Socioemotional difficulties in childhood are one of the best predictors of adverse developmental outcomes, including later diagnoses of mental health disorders, academic-underachievement, and delinquency. Among the most prevalent childhood socioemotional problems are conduct problems, emotional problems, and hyperactive and inattentive behaviors. These issues often co-occur and when they do, this further increases the likelihood of negative developmental outcomes.” 

They then note that, “Harsh parenting techniques, which include both verbal (e.g., shouting) and physical (e.g., spanking) punishment, are still fairly common, particularly up until middle childhood.” They also speak to the traditional notions that children who are more difficult to manage may elicit harsh parenting and harsh parenting may model and reinforce more negative behavior in children. Patterson’s coercive cycle model is one attempt to capture this cyclical behavior by parent and child. Their sample is over 14,000 families in the UK.  Here’s more from their discussion and conclusion:

The aim of the current study was to investigate the role of (predominantly mother-reported) harsh parenting practices in the development of socioemotional problems in early- to middle-childhood. Following Patterson's coercion model, we hypothesized that conduct problems and hyperactive/inattentive behaviors would share reciprocal relations with harsh parenting tactics. This hypothesis was partially supported with hyperactive/inattentive behaviors sharing bidirectional relations with harsh parenting tactics from age 5 to age 7. However, contrary to our hypothesis, conduct problems did not exhibit reciprocal relations with harsh parenting tactics: only conduct problems at age 3 led to increased harsh parenting at age 5. We also hypothesized that harsh parenting tactics would mediate developmental cascades from conduct problems and hyperactive/inattentive behaviors to emotional problems. This hypothesis was partially supported by the combined effect of harsh parenting and withdrawal tactics mediating a cascade from conduct problems at age 3 to increased emotional problems at age 7, thus pointing toward the value of synthesizing different developmental cascade theories. Taken together, results indicated that the reciprocal relations between harsh parenting and child behavior differ across the studied time-lags, thus, suggesting that the relations between parenting and child behavior are influenced by developmental changes occurring during early- to middle-childhood. While results suggested that withdrawal tactics may be beneficial for reducing emotional problems and hyperactive/inattentive behaviors during the preschool years, we found that they may exacerbate externalizing behaviors from age 5 to age 7. Withdrawal tactics were also seen to increase as a response to externalizing behaviors. 

In contrast to hyperactive/inattentive behaviors, conduct problems were not influenced by (predominantly mother-reported) harsh parenting tactics, suggesting that during the preschool years, such tactics do not lead to an increase in behaviors such as throwing temper tantrums. In fact, our results show that harsh parenting is at best ineffective for managing conduct problems. 

Examining the effect of withdrawal tactics on externalizing and internalizing behaviors, results of the current study suggested that such tactics may have differential effects over development. Specifically, from age 3 to age 5, (predominantly mother-reported) withdrawal tactics were associated with a reduction in hyperactive/inattentive behaviors as well as emotional problems, suggesting that during the preschool years such parenting strategies do not have a negative on effect socioemotional child development but may even reduce some unwanted behaviors. However, this effect was reversed from age 5 to age 7, indicating that withdrawal tactics may lead to increased socioemotional difficulties in older children. One potential reason for the observed change in direction of associations could be that, at age 5, children may require more active interactions before and after a time-out than are likely to be given by parents who frequently use withdrawal tactics. Younger children, in contrast, may still benefit from clear parenting signals indicated by withdrawal tactics even if these are not accompanied by active parenting strategies such as verbal explanations. 

Harsh parenting practices at age 3 were associated with increases in harsh parenting practices at age 5. However, this was not the case between ages 5 and 7 where only emotional problems and hyperactivity/inattention showed within-person stability. This suggests that, for conduct problems and parenting practices, the age span of 5 to 7 represents a transition period in which parenting behaviors and conduct problems change relative to individuals’ previous behaviors. This could potentially be due to children spending more time in school, which likely leads to an adaptation in parenting strategies and to changes in conduct behaviors as children's social circles grow and peer and teacher relationships become increasingly more important.

Overall, results of the current study suggest that the reciprocal relations between parenting practices and child behavior are not stable across early- to middle-childhood but that they are affected by developmental changes that occur during this period. 

To conclude, the results of our study support Patterson's coercion model as we observed reciprocal within-family relations between (predominantly maternal-reported) harsh parenting practices and hyperactive/inattentive behaviors as well as emotional problems. Findings not only highlight that parenting practices such as smacking or shouting may have detrimental effects on children's mental health but also that children presenting with behavioral issues may place additional strain on maternal parenting behaviors. Consequently, it is crucial for interventions aiming to reduce the occurrence of socioemotional problems, and particularly the co-occurrence of emotional and conduct problems, to focus on the whole family system and specifically on parenting behaviors. Furthermore, considering that harsh parenting is still used, more attention should be paid to public health campaigns that can inform parents about the potential harmful effects of such parenting practices on children's socioemotional development and equip them with alternative, more adaptive parenting tools. 

I love this study for several reasons. First, it looks at changes in the dynamics of parenting children as they move from the preschool years to early elementary school. Second, it recognizes the reciprocal relationship between parents and their children. Finally, it emphasizes the complexity of studying these phenomena. I think this is especially important when children do not follow normative developmental pathways – the challenges of parenting are even more daunting than with neurotypical children.