Child Discipline in Times of Conflict

• Author: Michael Malcolm,Vidya Diwakar,George Naufal
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002719887492
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Child Discipline

in Times of Conflict

Michael Malcolm

1

, Vidya Diwakar

2

,

and George Naufal

3

Abstract

Using a unique pairing of household survey data and geolocational conflict data, we

investigate the relationship between conflict intensity and the disciplinary methods

employed by Iraqi households. We find that parents in high-conflict areas are more

likely to use moderate and severe corporal punishment and are less likely to use

constructive parenting techniques like redirection. A corresponding difference-in-

differences analysis confirms the nature of this association. While there is a general

sense that war has profound long-term impacts on the psychological health of

children, research on transmission mechanisms remains limited. Given the per-

sistence of early childhood outcomes into adulthood, these results are potentially

an important piece of assessing and mitigating the long-term costs of war on

civilian populations.

Keywords

Iraq war, child discipline, mental health, Middle East, household interactions

The Iraq war has imposed large costs on the Iraqi population. For example, Stiglitz

and Bilmes (2008) note that Iraqi gross domestic product basically flatlined in the

years following the second Gulf War, despite a more than 100 percent increase in the

1

Department of Economics and Finance, West Chester University, PA, USA

2

Chronic Poverty Advisory Network, Overseas Development Institute, London, UK

3

Public Policy Research Institute, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael Malcolm, Department of Economics and Finance, West Chester University, 700 S High St., West

Chester, PA 19382, USA.

Email: mmalcolm@wcupa.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2020, Vol. 64(6) 1070-1094

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002719887492

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

price of oil. The human cost has also been large. As of May 2019, the Iraq Body

Count (IBC) database has recorded at least 183,535 civilian deaths related to vio-

lence during and after the war (IBC 2019).

The impact of war-related violence on households can be devastating. War leads

to long-term reductions in income and economic growth, in addition to permanent

increases in risk for both physical and mental health–related disorders (Blattman and

Miguel 2010; Levy and Sidel 2008). These stresses can spill over to the way in which

families interact, and there is a small but growing literature on the effects of war on

family violence (Saile et al. 2014; Sriskandarajah, Neuner, and Catani 2015b). In

this article, we use data from Iraq to study the relationship between conflict intensity

and the disciplinary practices employed by Iraqi households.

The limited data that are available sugges t that child maltreatment in Iraq is

serious. A 2013 report issued by Iraq’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs claims

that as many as five of six children in Iraq are exposed to domestic violence in some

form and notes serious inadequacies in the legal infrastructure for addressing domes-

tic violence (Al Monitor 2013). Similarly, United Nations (UN) reporting shows that

Iraqi children suffer from high levels of domestic violence but that lack of good data

makes the extent of the problem “difficult to ascertain” (Office of the High Com-

missioner for Human Rights 2011). Findings are similar for other countries in the

region, including 92 percent support for corporal punishment of children among

Syrian parents and a 46 percent incidence rate of harsh physical discipline among

Egyptian parents (Akmatov 2010; Runyan et al. 2010). Work that exists on child

maltreatment in the context of conflict in other areas of the world also suggests that

the problem can be serious. Catani, Schauer, and Neuner (2008) documented high

levels of child maltreatment during conflict periods in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka

but commented at that time that analyzing the impact of war was difficult because of

a lack of comparable pre- and post-conflict data. More recently, a number of studies

employ interviews with war-affected parents and children to conclude that exposure

to war and to other forms of mass trauma is a predictor of violent parenting practices.

For example, Saile et al. (2014) reached this finding using data from Uganda and

Sriskandarajah, Neuner, and Catani (2015b) for Sri Lanka. There also appears to be a

link between war and intimate partner violence (Clark et al. 2010; Haj-Yahia and

Clark 2013).

Our contribution to this literature is twofold. First, we bring new data and

statistical techniques to bear on the question. Where previous studies mostly rely

on interviews with modest sample sizes and retrospective self-reporting of expo-

sure to trauma, our sample size is much larger and uses official casualty records to

measure exposure to violence. Second, the regional context is important. The

Middle East is extremely conflict-prone and has experienced more conflicts than

any other major region worldwide since World War II, which is especially trou-

bling since the Middle East has a very young population (Naufal 2011; Dhillon

2008). Given the lifelong persistence of conflict experiences, with measurable

costs decades into the future, work on the microlevel impacts of war is important

Malcolm et al. 1071