A master goal of parenting is to transmit values, behavior and ideas around lifestyles based on cultural knowledge of the adult tasks and competencies needed for advisable functioning in society (Gershoff, 2002; Harrison, Wilson, Pino, Chon & Buriel, 1990). For African-American parents, transmitting an awareness of cultural values and norms is integrated into parenting; childrearing has been shaped by the stripping of back up systems through the experience of slavery, Jim Crow laws enacted after the reconstruction period, and forms of modern racism, microaggressions and oppression. In response, corporal punishment has been utilized as a manner to control and restrain the behavior of children and youth. In guild to fully understand the utilise of physical penalisation in African-American families, it is of import to capeesh both historical and psychological factors that influence family practices. This paper volition accost africentric values as they pertain to childrearing and parenting practices, the employ of physical punishment in African-American families, and the importance of promoting culturally relevant positive parenting approaches.

The research literature suggests that the parenting styles, behaviors, characteristics and strengths of African-American families are guided past cultural heritage and africentric beliefs. Africentric values include communalism and harmony — the notion that individual identity and operation occur within families and communities that include fictive kinship networks. Closely related to these values is spirituality, a sense of connectedness between animate and inanimate objects, the belief that a life forcefulness exists in all things (Myers, 1993). For African-American families, child rearing is viewed as a communal activity (Forehand & Kotchick, 1996; Garcia Coll, Meyer & Brillon, 1995), with families inclusive of extended family members and kinship network systems comprised of family friends and important members of the community (Boyd-Franklin, 2013). African-American families as well have flexible family roles that allow for adaptability and change (Boyd-Franklin, 2013). Children are taught to exist obedient and respectful within these family and kinship networks, particularly of their elders (Forehand & Kotchick, 1996; Garcia Coll et al., 1995). The values of interdependence and collectivism also as the importance of spirituality and religion are thereby transmitted to children (Boyd-Franklin, 2013). Research on African-American parenting indicates that africentric values are of import to childrearing beliefs and attitudes (Thomas, 2000). Parents emphasize cleanliness, family unit ties, independence, obedience, religion, and moral and personal values, such as behaving well and respecting others (Spencer, 1990; Thomas, 2000).

Physical punishment has to be viewed in light of these principles as culture informs parenting expectations, including the employ of corporal punishment (Gershoff, 2002). Physical punishment is probable to be used to prevent misbehavior or extreme negative consequences (Ispa & Halgunseth, 2004). Communalism and collectivism conceptualize children as representatives of the grouping considering grouping functioning is seen every bit more than important than individual functioning. For example, according to Flynn (1998), African-American families are more probable to spank to prevent embarrassment in public.

The history of slavery required that children learn to obey to keep themselves rubber, merely also because their identity was a reflection of the plantation (see companion article on historical underpinnings past Patton in this newsletter). Physical penalty was used by slave owners to reinforce letters of obedience and was adopted in slave families as a way to go on children safe. Research suggests that modern parents persist in endorsing physical penalty as a fashion to decrease defiant or oppositional behavior, to forestall children from endangering themselves, and to minimize connected misbehavior, with higher rates of spanking reported in low-income families (Berlin et al., 2009; Ispa & Halgunseth, 2004). African-American mothers report engaging in more frequent spanking, but beyond all racial/indigenous groups, spanking resulted in increased beliefs problems in children over time (Gershoff, Lansford, Sexton, Davis-Kean & Sameroff, 2012). Although this article has focused on physical punishment, research suggests that African-American parents also engage in more verbal penalization (Berlin et al., 2009). The importance of education, a strength of black families (Boyd-Franklin, 2013), is enhanced by the potential economical benefits and security for families, leading to loftier expectations effectually grades. Poor report cards or reports of misbehavior at school sometimes leads to concrete punishment, but is motivated by an try to reduce misbehavior for youth and improve their futures. With omnipresent fears and dangers from police brutality and the schoolhouse-to-prison pipeline, or living in vehement inner-city neighborhoods, African-American parents often feel compelled to apply swift physical penalty to protect children.

In club to reduce physical penalization in African-American families, it is important to include culturally relevant practices in parenting programs and therapy. The notion that African-American children are more than "at take chances" on a number of dimension has to be acknowledged and affirmed in work with families, along with the promotion of positive parenting approaches inclusive of africentric values. Family practitioners need to back up parenting approaches that draw on the strengths of communalism and spirituality. The notion of respect, particularly for elders, needs to be reinforced as important, and preparation programs that help parents to deconstruct parenting goals based on their underlying values and goals can be helpful in redirecting parents toward more positive parenting approaches.

Research suggests that parents with a more positive racial identity are more likely to demonstrate culturally affirming parenting (Thomas, 2000). Programs also need to include racial socialization strategies, messages and techniques to help promote resiliency in youth and which help youth to develop a positive racial identity. As positive self-concept and racial identity are important for greater accomplishment and adaptive functioning for children, it may be important to help parents with culturally affirming parenting styles. Racial socialization processes provide key protective factors for children, as information technology has been found to exist related to racial identity attitudes, self-esteem and lower internalizing behaviors including depression, anxiety and anger management (Thomas, Speight & Witherspoon, 2010), along with schoolhouse efficacy and achievement (Constantine & Blackmon, 2000). For example, parents tin can be guided in how to assistance children to make positive cocky-statements and affirmations around self-identity, self-efficacy and bookish achievement (Steele, 2011). Youth may be taught racial "comebacks" to apply with peers or teachers at school, and parents can be encouraged to hash out their ain problems with education to serve as function models for youth (Stevenson, 2013). Parents may be encouraged to connect with other families, church building and customs organizations to build support systems to promote youth development and reduce parenting stress. Finally, parents need to be encouraged to assistance children to develop the skills to exist bicultural, navigating both majority and minority cultures. The inclusion of culturally relevant and affirming practices will help to reduce the rates of concrete penalization in African-American families thereby strengthening our communities.

References

Berlin, L.J., Ispa, J.K., Fine, G.A., Malone, P.S., Brooks‐Gunn, J., Brady‐Smith, C., & Bai, Y. (2009). Correlates and consequences of spanking and verbal penalization for depression‐income white, African American, and Mexican American toddlers. Child Development, 80(5), 1403-1420.

Boyd-Franklin, N. (2013). Blackness families in therapy: Understanding the African American feel. Guilford Publications.

Constantine, M.Thousand., & Blackmon, S.K. (2002). Blackness adolescents' racial socialization experiences their relations to habitation, schoolhouse, and peer self-esteem. Journal of Black Studies, 32(3), 322-335.

Flynn, C.P. (1998). To spank or not to spank: The effect of situation and age of child on support for corporal punishment. Journal of Family Violence, 13, 21–37.

Forehand, R., & Kotchick, B.A. (1996). Cultural diversity: A wake-up for parent training. Behavior Therapy, 27, 187-206.

Garcia Coll, C.T., Meyer, Eastward.C., & Brillon, L. (1995). Ethnic and minority parenting. In M.H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting: Biology and environmental of parenting (Vol. 2, pp. 189-209). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Gershoff, Eastward.T. (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated kid behaviors and experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 539–579.

Gershoff, East.T., Lansford, J.E., Sexton, H.R., Davis-Kean, P., & Sameroff, A.J. (2012). Longitudinal links between spanking and children's externalizing behaviors in a national sample of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American families. Child Development, 83, 838-843.

Harrison, A.O., Wilson, One thousand.Northward., Pine, C.J., Chon, Southward.Q., & Buriel, R. (1990). Family ecologies of ethnic minority children. Child Development, 61, 347-362.

Ispa, J.Thou., & Halgunseth, L.C. (2004). Talking well-nigh corporal penalization: Ix low-income African American mothers' perspectives. Early Babyhood Research Quarterly, 19(iii), 463-484.

Myers, L.J. (1993). Understanding an Afrocentric globe view: Introduction to an optimal psychology. Kendall/Hunt.

Spencer, One thousand.B. (1990). Parental values transmission: Implications of the development of African-American children. In H. E. Cheatham & J. B. Stewart (Eds.), Black families: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 111-130). New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction.

Steele, C.Chiliad. (2011). Whistling Vivaldi: And other clues to how stereotypes touch on u.s. (issues of our time). WW Norton & Company.

Stevenson, H.C. (2013). Promoting racial literacy in schools: Differences that make a departure. Teachers Higher Printing.

Thomas, A.J. (2000). Impact of racial identity on African American child-rearing beliefs. Journal of Black Psychology, 26(3), 317-329.

Thomas. A.J., Speight, S.L., & Witherspoon, Grand.M. (2010). Racial socialization, racial identity, and race-related stress of African American parents. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 18, 407-412.

Writer bio

Anita Jones Thomas, PhD Anita Jones Thomas, PhD, is dean of the Higher of Applied Behavioral Sciences at the University of Indianapolis. Her research interests include racial identity, racial socialization and parenting problems for African-Americans. Thomas is a clinical psychologist and current president of Div. 37 and has previously served as chair of APA's Committee for Children, Youth and Families.