Discipline attributions and association with psychological functioning of children

Use of physical discipline techniques can lead to harmful outcomes, not only physically, but also emotionally. Harsh discipline has been linked to internalizing disorders such as depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and shame. This study explored the attributions held by mothers and their children to explain the reasons for the given discipline and its relation to children's emotional functioning. This study focused on four discipline attributions domains: deservedness, mother's mood stability, intentionality, and causality. Ninety-seven mother-child dyads (with children ages 7-12) were recruited from the Wasatch Front and given a battery of measures. Mothers completed measures of child abuse potential and discipline attributions. The child was given a self-report battery of attributional and emotional functioning measures. Measures were analyzed using Pearson's correlations and structural equation modeling. Results showed that children seem to have higher rates of internalizing disorders when their mother's felt the discipline given was fair and her mood was stable. The child, on the other hand, attributed the discipline as being unfair and their mother's mood as unstable. Children also seemed to hold negative self-attributions, which were internal, stable, and global. This phenomenon could be conceptualized as an "externalizing blame" perspective. Given the feeling of helplessness to change discipline outcomes, harsh discipline may be more likely to occur and more often be linked to poor emotional child functioning. This tendency may also be a contributing factor for continuing the cycle of violence if the child as an adult takes on externalizing blame attributions. Results demonstrated no correlations between child abuse potential and child outcomes measures, although this may reflect sample size and social desirability responding.