Prohibition weakens intergenerational transmission of hitting

Evidence

Using longitudinal data from the Stockholm Study — a prospective study of individuals born between 1955 and 1985, tracking health, behavior, and family outcomes across multiple cohorts — Stattin and colleagues examined whether the intergenerational transmission of physical punishment practices changed following the 1979 Swedish prohibition. Their finding: the strength of the relationship between having been physically punished as a child and using physical punishment as a parent was meaningfully weaker in cohorts socialized after 1979 than in preceding cohorts. Parents who had themselves been hit were less likely to hit their own children if they had grown up in the post-prohibition normative environment, even controlling for parental education, socioeconomic status, and other demographic variables. … The mechanism the authors propose is normative: the post-prohibition social environment reduces the transmission of the behavioral script that physical correction is normal, appropriate, and expected, before the child has formed parenting practices of their own. — , The Rod and the Child, 10889

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Corporal punishment’s harm joined smoking and lead exposure as settled consensus — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 6748; Legal change against corporal punishment cascades across generations rather than declining linearly — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 7239; Prohibitions without enforcement can make severe abuse harder to detect — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 7800 (+8 more)

Related

• Legal change against corporal punishment cascades across generations rather than declining linearly (similarity 0.91)
• Swedish parental corporal punishment fell from 90% to 10% in four decades after prohibition (similarity 0.90)
• Legal prohibition of corporal punishment drives attitudinal shifts rather than merely reflecting them (similarity 0.88)
• Prohibition with normative-change infrastructure reduces physical punishment by ninety-six percent (similarity 0.87)
• Ancestral-calling logic forces immorality to be preserved across generations (similarity 0.87)
• Legal prohibition shifts normalcy even for those who still practice the behavior (similarity 0.84)
• Swedish corporal punishment prevalence fell 96 percent within 42 years of prohibition (similarity 0.84)
• Parental smacking prevalence halved within twelve years of New Zealand’s 2007 prohibition (similarity 0.83)
• Corporal punishment’s harm joined smoking and lead exposure as settled consensus (similarity 0.83)
• Swedish post-prohibition data falsified opponents’ predictions of more abuse and criminalization (similarity 0.83)
• Law changes norms even when it never produces prosecutions (similarity 0.83)
• The discipline-abuse legal line may facilitate rather than prevent abuse. (similarity 0.81)
• Prohibitions without enforcement can make severe abuse harder to detect (similarity 0.81)
• Spanking persists because its benefit is salient while its harm is statistical. (similarity 0.81)
• Legal prohibition causes attitudinal change rather than merely reflecting it (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Legal prohibition of corporal punishment drives attitudinal shifts rather than merely reflecting them #expands (0.85) — , The Rod and the Child, 8150
• Individual persuasion cannot change norm-sustained practices like corporal punishment #contradicts (0.70) — , The Rod and the Child, 10747