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‘I didn't violent punch him’: parental accounts of punishing children with mental health problems
Author(s) -
O'Reilly Michelle
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.52
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1467-6427
pISSN - 0163-4445
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6427.2008.00431.x
Subject(s) - punishment (psychology) , psychology , construct (python library) , mental health , developmental psychology , spanking , criminology , psychiatry , medicine , suicide prevention , poison control , medical emergency , computer science , programming language
This paper examines the ways in which parents attending family therapy report how they discipline their children. The children are reported to have mental health problems and by the nature of their disorders present challenging behaviours. Within the family therapy setting, parents account for their methods of punishment which includes threatening, punching, hitting and smacking with belts. They report desires to inflict physical damage upon the child, contrast their punishment strategies against the extremeness of the child and co‐construct the essential and necessary nature of the discipline. Investigating parental perspectives has wider implications for child discipline and child protection and the growing social impact of discipline techniques for policy‐makers.