ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at corporal punishment of adolescents in large and nationally representative samples to answer the several questions: Are adolescent daughters hit as much as sons? Do mothers hit as much as fathers? and Does social class affect corporal punishment of adolescents? It focuses on an important issue that affects how much trust to put in the research on psychologically damaging side effects of corporal punishment. The contemporary data on hitting adolescents was obtained by asking parents if they used corporal punishment on one of their children and how often. The low frequency of fathers hitting adolescent daughters is consistent with the relatively low prevalence rate for fathers hitting daughters. The threshold is probably high because the average number of times that adolescents were hit was 7.9 times per year based on the adult recall data, and 5.9 times per year based on the contemporary data.
