The Relation Between College Education and Beliefs about Parent Discipline

Abstract Although researchers have speculated about why education relates to parenting practices, such as spanking, there is very little direct evidence for why this relation exists. This study examined the relation between education and parent discipline beliefs in a novel way by comparing college freshmen and seniors at a large public university, thus allowing for a clear comparison of education groups before adults become parents and lower education becomes a proxy for something else (e.g., higher stress) in predicting child outcomes. We examined differences in freshmen and seniors’ beliefs about parent discipline as well as predictors of those beliefs, reasoning that courses taken or changes in thinking style may predict beliefs about discipline. We examined students’ ( N = 600) views on punitive discipline using several measures and found that freshmen were significantly more likely than seniors to endorse spanking, harsh discipline, and spanking of all age groups but infants, controlling for participant age, parents’ education, and spanking experienced as a child. However, we found no significant difference in thinking style (i.e., postformal thought, need for cognition) controlling for these variables. In a regression predicting composite punitive discipline, level of education and courses taken covering discipline were significant predictors. These results suggest college coursework is a novel determinant of parenting beliefs before young adults become parents, which has practical implications for promoting the parenting practices we know relate to positive child outcomes.