Search Here

Parents tend to get physical with their children if they misbehave in public, more often than it was thought before, reveals a new research.

The study claims that parents gave their youngsters some sort of 'negative touch' when the children did not submit to the parents' wishes in public places. Apparently, the occurrence of same is much more common than what is shown in laboratory experiments. 

The first ever real-world study of care-giver discipline, lists arm pulling, pinching, slapping and spanking as 'negative touch.' 

"I was very surprised to see what many people consider a socially undesirable behavior done by nearly a quarter of the caregivers," Stansbury said. "I have also seen hundreds of kids and their parents in a lab setting and never once witnessed any of this behavior," said lead author of the study Kathy Stansbury is a trained psychologist and associate professor inMichigan State University.

Stansbury, conducted the study to get a picture of how often parents use 'positive' and 'negative' touch in order in noncompliance episodes, outside the laboratory, in real life situations.. 

For the study, a team of university student researchers anonymously observed 106 discipline interactions between caregivers and children ages 3-5 in public places and recorded the results, the news release stated.

Apart from the frequency of instances where parents used the 'negative' touch, another surprising finding was that male caregivers touched the children more often than female caregivers while teaching discipline. And the male touch, most of the time was positive like hugging, kissing, patting etc.   

"When we think of dad, we think of him being the disciplinarian, and mom as nurturer, but that's just not what we saw," Stansbury said in the news release. "I do think that we are shifting as a society and fathers are becoming more involved in the daily mechanics of raising kids, and that's a good thing for the kids and also a good thing for the dads."

It was the positive touch, which children complied more easily and more often than the negative touch, Stansbury said.

With negative touch, even if the children did obey their elders, they also, either pouted or sulked away, she added.  

"If your child is upset and not minding you and you want to discipline them, I would use a positive, gentle touch," Stansbury said. "Our data found that negative touch didn't work."

The data was published in the current issue of the research journal Behavior and Social Issues.