Predictors of parents' physical disciplinary practices

Objective: This study examined how childhood history of discipline (1) rela ted to ratings of how severe and typical punishments were; and (2) predicte d parents' use of discipline techniques. The influence of child culpability on these ratings was also investigated. Method: Ninety-nine New Zealand parents rated 12 physical discipline scenar ios varying in discipline severity and perceived child culpability. Parents judged how severe and typical they considered the disciplines depicted in the scenarios and reported on how often they had experienced such disciplin e as children and how often they had used them with their own children. Results: When the child was perceived to be at fault, parents rated the dis cipline depicted as less severe, considered the technique more typical, rep orted they had been similarly disciplined more frequently, and applied such discipline to their child more frequently. Childhood history of a discipli ne was related to the parent's use of that method, and the parents judged t echniques they used with their own children as less severe and more typical of methods of discipline. History of discipline and severity judgments wer e the best predictors of parents' disciplinary practices. Conclusions: Although the findings support the cycle of violence theory, mo re complex potential pathways to abusive parenting, including the variables in this study, are proposed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd.