ABSTRACT
Psychologists have long sought evidence that abusive parents suffer from a particular mental illness or personality disorder. Parental aggression to children is commonly conceptualized on a continuum, ranging from the use of mild corporal or physical punishment to very severe child abuse. Cross-sectional research studies examine children directly and try to find a link between a child's current exposure to physical punishment and aggression in that child. This chapter examines more closely different types of physical punishment and their relations to aggressive behavior. The effects of child abuse and physical punishment have also been investigated in a nationally representative sample. The chapter investigates the relation between parental "warmth", use of physical punishment, and the development of aggression. R. Larzelere also found that when parents frequently talked things over with their children, no relation remained between physical punishment and aggression.
