Commentary: Violent child disciplinary practices in low- and middle-income households

Child discipline as exercised by caregivers is a universal aspect of child rearing in all cultures. It can be thought of as deliberate actions on the part of caregivers designed to teach children self-control and acceptable behaviour. Whereas the need for child discipline is generally recognized, the application of violent psychological and physical disciplinary practices is a matter of considerable discussion and debate. Definitions of child maltreatment differ significantly between countries and cultures. To compound this problem, few data are available to monitor how parents and other caregivers discipline children, by means of violent as well as non-violent methods, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This makes it difficult to describe the nature of child disciplinary practices, their extent and their consequences. It also makes it difficult to develop evidence-based strategies that can mitigate any harmful practices. The data on which the analyses of the report published in this issue of the IJE are based 1 provide one of the few resources available to the field of child protection to help develop a more complete understanding of the prevalence of child disciplinary practices in a cross-national context. Part of the mandate of United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), is to advocate for the protection of children’s rights, including rights with respect to practices by caregivers. Although UNICEF has been collecting household data since the mid-1990s, data on violent and non-violent child disciplinary practices has not always been part of that data collection effort. To address the need for more specific data on this issue, UNICEF included an optional module on child discipline during the third round of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), which was completed in 33 of over 50 countries in the survey. This effort made MICS the most comprehensive effort to collect data on child disciplinary practices from lowand middle-income countries. The MICS child discipline module is a modified version of the Parent–Child