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J Youth Adolescence (2015) 44:658669 DOI 10.1007/s10964-014-0114-y
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
Spanking and Childrens Externalizing Behavior Across the First Decade of Life: Evidence for Transactional Processes
Michael J. MacKenzie Eric Nicklas
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn Jane Waldfogel
Received: 12 December 2013 / Accepted: 3 March 2014 / Published online: 25 March 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract Despite a growing literature associating physical discipline with later child aggression, spanking remains a typical experience for American children. The directionality of the associations between aggression and spanking and their continuity over time has received less attention. This study examined the transactional associations between spanking and externalizing behavior across the rst decade of life, examining not only how spanking relates to externalizing behavior leading up to the important transition to adolescence, but whether higher levels of externalizing lead to more spanking over time as well. We use data from the Fragile families and child well-being (FFCW) study to examine maternal spanking and childrens behavior at ages 1, 3, 5, and 9 (N = 1,874; 48 % girls). The FFCW is a longitudinal birth cohort study of children born between 1998 and 2000 in 20 medium to large US cities. A little over a quarter of this sample was spanked at age 1, and about half at age 3, 5, and 9. Estimates from a cross-lagged path model provided evidence of developmental continuity in both spanking and externalizing behavior, but results also highlighted important reciprocal processes taking hold early, with spanking inuencing later externalizing behavior, which, in turn, predicted subsequent spanking. These bidirectional effects held across race/ethnicity and childs gender. The ndings highlight the lasting effects of early spanking, both in inuencing early childs behavior, and in affecting
subsequent childs externalizing and parental spanking in a reciprocal manner. These amplifying transactional processes underscore the importance of early intervention before patterns may cascade across domains in the transition to adolescence.
Keywords Spanking Externalizing Aggression
Transactional Cumulative risk
Introduction
Developmental theory provides strong reasons to believe that harsh treatment by parents may lead to aggressive behavior on the part of children through modeling (Bandura 1965), social information processing (Weiss et al. 1992), and setting in motion amplifying reciprocal cycles of coercion, or transactions between parent and child (Patterson 1982). Conversely, theory on child...