Survey of discipline techniques with parents of toddler-age children

To examine the discipline behavior of parents of toddler-age children, this research focused on the parents* responses to misbehaviors of a toddler in various hypothetical situations. The primary objective of this study was to describe and compare the discipline practices used by mothers and fathers of female and male toddlers. A secondary objective was to compare mothers' and fathers’ reports of their perceptions of the most effective discipline practices with female and male toddlers. A third objective was to compare mothers’ self-reports with fathers’ reports of the mothers and to compare fathers’ self-reports with mothers’ reports of fathers.

The research sample consisted of 69 parents (A8 mothers and 21 fathers) who each completed a questionnaire. For the most part, the findings are consistent with previous research. However, with this sample, in one situation, the mothers and fathers differed in their use of a power assertive technique. Also, mothers of girls and mothers of boys differed in their use of an inductive technique and a power assertive technique. Fathers of girls and fathers of boys differed in their use of one inductive technique, two power assertive techniques, and three techniques that were not classifiable. There is a positive relationship between mothers' self-report and fathers' report of the mothers' actual use of discipline techniques and between fathers' self-report and mothers' report of the fathers' actual use of discipline techniques Also, most parents were found to use frequently those techniques that they felt were the most effective with toddlers. Examining parents' responses to hypothetical situations provided useful information concerning parent-child interactions.