Physical Punishment of Children: Sweden and the U.S.A.

Abstract

Banning corporal punishment in childrearing, as Sweden’s 1979 law does, has been advocated as an important child abuse preventive. This study explores the relationship between nationality and cultural receptivity to anticorporal punishment legislation, through a questionnaire given in 1981 to nonrandom student samples in two large public universities — one in the western U.S. (n = 365), another in eastern Sweden (n = 132). Americans of both sexes were more likely than Swedes to report they had received physical punishment and physical abuse as children and to oppose legislation prohibiting corporal punishment. However, if such law could be shown to reduce child abuse, a majority of Americans claimed they would then join Swedes in favoring it. Differences by sex, and by religious preference, were not significant. Additional findings and implications are discussed.