Post #4
The scholarly article The Impact of Culture Upon Child Rearing Practices and Definitions of Maltreatment by Anne M. Ferrari is a study that investigated the hypothesis that a parent’s cultural values like familism, machismo, and valuing children contribute to parental behavior like maltreatment. According to the 1996 National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, about 1,553,800 children in the United Sates were abused or neglected in 1993. It was also found that minority children have an increased likelihood for physical abuse. Because of statistics like this, the study also investigated whether or not families who encouraged the beliefs of familism are less likely to use physical or verbal punishment or more likely to use reasoning and nurturing. The study also investigated how a parent’s tolerance for a child’s misbehavior and the value they put on the children affected these forms of discipline as well. What is especially interesting about this study is that it does not only focus on males. It states that although machismo is something that is usually associated with Latin men, it can also be seen in women (Ferrari 795).
The study had 75 fathers and 75 mothers participate. The parents completed a questionnaire, which measured the answered based on seven scales including machismo, familism, the value of children, and childhood trauma. The machismo question included true or false questions, which measured gender role attitudes. Questions on the value of children and familism were measure don how strongly the parents agreed or disagreed with certain statements related to the subject. For example, the questionnaire might state, “One should consider what is better for the family rather than yourself personally”, and the parent would a strong agree/disagreement based on a 5-point scale.
What they found in the study was that fathers who held a low regard for familism were more likely to use physical punishment on their children. This does not mean that father show highly value familism would not physically discipline their children though, they are just less likely to do so. For machismo, the study found that there was a strong correlation between a strong sense of machismo and more physical punishment, but not as much of a correlation between a low regard of familism. It also concluded that machismo is responsible for the lack of affection many Latin fathers have fro their sons.
Personally I think that many of the findings in the study seem to be obvious outcomes, but it is important to have scientific evidence proving so. What I especially agreed with is the hypothesis though. Machismo is regularly associated with men, but I think it is a mind set established in women as well. Therefore, when young boys are growing up, many mothers may teach their sons to be a “macho” like their fathers and other men. The young boys learn to take on stereotypical gender roles. Because I personally thought that many of these results were obvious, I didn’t really disagree with anything. A person who cares about justice on the basis of gender might ask whether a majority of the parents’ children were male or female and how this may have an effect on the machismo/ familism. For example, how might a father’s machismo and punishment be different when he has all daughters compared to when he has all sons.
Ferrari, Anne M. "The Impact Of Culture Upon Child Rearing Practices And Definitions Of Maltreatment." Child Abuse & Neglect 26.8 (2002): 793-813. Criminal Justice Abstracts. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.
