Race as a Moderator of Associations Between Spanking and Child Outcomes

• Author: Elizabeth T. Gershoff,Andrew Grogan‐Kaylor
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12205
• Published date: 01 July 2016
• Date: 01 July 2016

E T. G University of Texas

A G-K University of Michigan

Race as a Moderator of Associations Between

Spanking and Child Outcomes

The cultural normativeness perspective argues

that parenting practices such as spanking are

more benecial for children when they occur in

cultural groups within which they are norma-

tive. Research on this issue in the United States

has focused on race as a marker of culture,

and ndings have been mixed. The present

study presents meta-analyses of ve studies

that reported effect sizes separately for White

(n=11,814) and Black (n=3,065) American

children (5 to 14 years of age). Mean weighted

effect sizes for both groups indicated statisti-

cally signicant associations with detrimental

outcomes; they were not statistically signi-

cantly different from one another. Contrary to

the cultural normativeness perspective, these

results demonstrate that spanking is similarly

associated with detrimental outcomes for White

and Black children in the United States.

Parenting beliefs, values, and goals are known

to vary as a function of environmental and cul-

tural contexts (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006;

Dasen & Mishra, 2000; Rogoff, 2003). As a

result, parenting practices vary across cultures

because cultures differ in which parenting prac-

tices they believe will promote those values

and goals (Mistry, Chaudhuri, & Diez, 2003;

Department of Human Development and Family Sciences,

University of Texas, 108 East Dean Keeton Street, Austin,

TX 78712 (liz.gershoff@austin.utexas.edu).

Key Words: Cultural normativeness, race, spanking.

Super & Harkness, 1986). Such cross-cultural

variation in a variety of parenting practices has

been observed in several recent multinational

comparisons (Bornstein et al., 2012; Gershoff

et al., 2010; Lansford et al., 2014;Runyan et al.,

2010).

In the United States, the notion of cultural

differences in parenting has largely focused on

one indicator of culture, namely the race or

ethnicity of the parents, and on one indicator

of parenting, namely physical punishment.

Research on cultural differences in parenting

has been driven largely by interest in the cultural

normativeness perspective (Deater-Deckard &

Dodge, 1997). According to this perspective,

parenting practices have more benecial (or

fewer detrimental) effects on children when

they occur in cultural groups within which they

are normative, and they have more detrimental

(and fewer benecial) effects when they are non-

normative (Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997).

The normativeness perspective hypothesizes

that if physical punishment is administered in a

cultural context in which spanking is considered

normative and acceptable, then the child who

is spanked will be more likely to accept and

comply with the parents’ disciplinary message,

thus reducing negative behavior over time. By

contrast, if physical punishment is administered

in a context in which spanking is less normative

and more aberrant, then the child will likely

reject the parents’ disciplinary message, and

the discipline will be ineffective in promot-

ing appropriate behavior and may instead elicit

negative reactivebehavior. This hypothesis grew

490 Family Relations 65 (July 2016): 490–501

DOI:10.1111/fare.12205