Children with a constellation of dark traits may be particularly challenging to parents because these traits are associated with an increased chance for parents to lose a supportive attitude in dealing with the child’s difficultness and to turn instead toward punishing strategies. The present study looks with more detail into the construct of parental punishment and examines differences and similarities in the effects of physical (harsh) versus nonphysical (corrective) discipline on the developmental course of childhood five-factor model–based dark traits across a 10-year time span. Data were drawn from an ongoing (masked for review) longitudinal study, including five assessment points across 10 years (Ntime 1 = 720, 54.4% girls, age range Time 1 = 8–14.78 years, M = 10.73, SD = 1.39). Latent growth modeling suggested significant differences between both kinds of parental discipline in terms of contrasting effects on subsequent growth in dark traits and also showed a number of age-and gender-specific effects of parental discipline on the developmental course of dark traits. These findings underscore the relevance of a more differentiated perspective on effects of parental punishment in understanding childhood maladaptive trait outcomes and may offer fruitful guidelines for the development of intervention programs targeting children that are difficult to manage.

Childhood trait development naturally unfolds within a social context (Neyer & Asendorpf, 2001), with consistent support for the role of parenting as one of the earliest and most significant environmental factors contributing a child’s social, emotional, and behavioral growth (Kiff et al., 2011). This finding speaks for itself, given that the closest personal network of young children is formed by core family members. The social convoy theory (Kahn & Antonucci, 1982) proposes that parents are the inner circle of the social convoy surrounding the young child, with only minor quantitative relationship differences across families, such as the size of the primary family network. In contrast, substantial variability is believed to exist at the level of qualitative relationship characteristics, including the...