Occupation and Physical Punishment: A Response to Straus

Abstract

In the preceding paper, Straus reports no difference between and parents in their use of physical punishment. He interprets this as showing parents of upwardly mobile children have tended to use child rearing practices (in this case, avoidance of physical punishment). In so doing, they help to equip the child with personality traits appropriate for the child's stratum of destination. However, his interpretation ignores the fact just over half of both and parents did use physical punishment. It raises the intriguing question of accounting for the half who used physical punishment, especially among the class. Perhaps Straus' findings can be explained by the fact his measure of social is based on dividing the population into a working class who performed manual jobs and a middle class who did non-manual work. However, with the increased affluence and technological complexity of society, the dichotomy of manual versus non-manual may no longer validly serve as a basis for differentiating life styles and especially child rearing patterns. Even with education and occupational title held constant, there are differences inherent within the framework of one's occupation which may show a closer relationship to child rearing patterns. For example, consider three mechanical engineers, all with a M.S. degree. One engineer is a theoretically oriented college professor, another is in an executive administrative position, and the third is employed in a large factory installation and spends much of his time actually with and redesigning machinery. On a traditional social index such as Hollingshead-Redlich two factor index, all three engineers would be given the same social class. But the tasks required by their particular jobs, which (in line with Kohn's theory) are considered to influence the way they socialize their children, differ considerably. Therefore, it is suggested what appears to be a narrowing of the gap between the and in child rearing patterns (Bronfenbrenner, 1961) results from the fact in an affluent i dustrial society the dichotomy of manual-non manual is no longer the highly differentiating factor it may once have been. Consequently, attempts to relate child rearing techniques to social may suppress an actual relationship between occupation and child rearing techniques. What is needed is a system of conceptualizing occupations in a way which more directly reflects the demand characteristics of an occupation. The taxonomy of 'occupational environments introduced by Holland (1959) in a paper on vocational choice theory, seems to be one such possibility. Holland's categories take into account the particular interpersonal, verbal and motor skills utilized in an individual's job, and thus cut across social boundaries. To provide a preliminary examination of the hypothesis child rearing patterns are related to the tasks which one does in his job, a small exploratory study was undertaken. Using students in an undergraduate sociology class, the Straus study was replicated, and the data was analyzed, step by step, according to the procedures outlined in his paper. Although the sample size was small(N = 17), he results obtained were so similar to those reported by Straus, there exists a measure of confidence the same phenomena are being reported. For example, 53 percent of the respondents in the replication reported use or threat of use of physical punishment. And the rankings of traits which parents consider desirable in their children are also consistent with those reported by Straus. As in the Straus study, there were no important differences between social classes (mean physical punishment scores of 1.02 for the and 1.00 for the class). Finally, in agreement with Straus, parents who ranked as a desired characteristic (first to third in ranking) had mean physical punishment scores of 1.50, compared to 0.22 for parents who ranked obedience from fourth to last. When that I think for myself was ranked first to third, the mean physical punishment score was 0.18, compared to 0.95 when this charac-