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Adult Caregivers’ Behavioral Responses to Child Noncompliance in Public Settings: Gender Differences and the Role of Positive and Negative Touch

Behavior and Social Issues

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Title Adult Caregivers’ Behavioral Responses to Child Noncompliance in Public Settings: Gender Differences and the Role of Positive and Negative Touch
 
Creator Stansbury, Kathy
Haley, David W.
Lee, JungAh
Brophy-Herb, Holly E. E.
 
Subject Developmental Psychology; Human Behavior; Child Behavior
touch; parent-child relationship; naturalistic observation; parenting
 
Description We examined differences in male and female caregivers’ behavioral styles, and their use of negative or positive touch in noncompliance episodes with preschool-aged children that occurred in public settings. Coders reliably coded adult caregiver behavioral style (authoritarian-type, authoritative-type, and permissive-type), positive and negative touch, and children’s latency to comply, as well as the child’s demeanor at the end of the noncompliance event. Surprisingly, almost a quarter of all children were touched negatively by adults during these public episodes. Contrary to expectations based on self-report and laboratory studies, male caregivers were more likely to use touch in noncompliance episodes with children, and more likely to use positive touch, than female caregivers. Adult caregiver behavioral style, and positive versus negative touch were each related to children’s responses in the noncompliance episodes. This work extends the findings of earlier studies about adult caregiver behavioral styles and highlights the use of positive versus negative touch as an important behavioral context for compliance requests of young children. Further, child demeanor is a crucial measure of the success of parenting behavior in noncompliance episodes because it indexes behavior occurring after compliance occurs, but which has the potential to be a significant influence on family harmony. The use of naturalistic observational methodology is a suggested as a critical step in validating findings on harsh discipline and corporal punishment that rely on methods in which social desirability may be a confound.
 
Publisher University of Illinois at Chicago Library
 
Date 2012-08-02
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/bsi/article/view/2979
10.5210/bsi.v21i0.2979
 
Source Behavior and Social Issues; Vol 21 (2012); 80-114
1064-9506
 
Language eng
 
Relation https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/bsi/article/view/2979/3283