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My interests are in developing more knowledge to reduce violence against children and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), with the aim of improving child and family well-being. It is my hope that a better understanding of how to reduce violence against children, and how to reduce ACEs, will contribute to a better understanding of how to improve mental health and well-being across the lifespan. In this research I try to understand the family and community origins of aggression, antisocial behavior, anxiety and depression across diverse communities and contexts. My current research focuses on parenting and child development using international data. I try to understand these issues within the context of current conversations about children’s rights.
A particular focus of my work has been to examine the outcomes of physical punishment.
“Corporal punishment is the most common form of violence against children worldwide, leading to the injury and death of thousands of children each year. Its very widespread social acceptance means that a level of violence in childrearing is normalised, entrenching children’s low status and paving the way for other forms of violence and mistreatment.” (End Violence Against Children & End Corporal Punishment, 2022)
“The magnitude of violence against children is staggering. Globally, the most pervasive form of violence against children is corporal punishment. Because it often occurs in the confines of homes and other settings where children live, study and play, it is largely hidden and challenging to detect. Worldwide, it is estimated that nearly one billion children are hit, slapped, spanked, pinched, or otherwise physically punished regularly by their parents, caregivers, teachers, or other trusted adults, the same individuals responsible for nurturing, protecting, and educating them (UNICEF, 2017; World Health Organization, 2020).” (Stewart-Tufescu, 2023)
Our meta-analytic review of 50 years of research on the outcomes of physical punishment (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016) demonstrated that physical punishment is associated with a wide variety of negative outcomes [learn more], and has been part of several national level policy discussions on parenting. In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics passed a policy statement discouraging the use of physical punishment of children (Sege et al., 2019). Our meta-analysis was cited in that policy statement. Referring to our work, the policy statement indicated that “A 2016 meta-analysis showed that current literature does not support the finding of benefit from physical punishment in the long-term.” Similarly, in early 2019, the American Psychological Association also passed a resolution discouraging the use of physical punishment (American Psychological Association, 2019). This policy statement also cited our meta-analysis.
Additional quantitative work has demonstrated that this finding remains true even in contexts when physical punishment is used minimally, or when used in ostensibly “normative” ways. In a number of papers, we have investigated these associations across diverse communities and countries. Lastly, in additional papers, we have worked to demonstrate more “causally robust” associations between physical punishment and undesirable child outcomes using a variety of quantitative methods.
A more recent stream of research pays particular attention to parenting and child development across low and middle income countries (LMIC’s). Countries that are not high-income countries are under-represented in current social research (Henrich et al., 2010), particularly research on parenting and child development (Draper et al., 2022). Further, in this new stream of research, we examine a broader range of parenting behaviors, with a particular emphasis on “positive parenting” strategies (e.g. Ward et al., 2022, 2023). From this research, the only positive discipline behavior that has emerged so far as being associated with better child outcomes is “explain[ing] why (child)’s behaviour was wrong.” (Ward et al., 2023)
I teach courses mostly in the area of statistics, quantitative methods and data visualization.