Corporal punishment by parents and child-to-parent aggression in Spanish adolescents

Child-to-parent aggression (CPA) is a social problem that is receiving much attention because of the increasing frequency and the consequences for its victims. The primary aim of this study was to assess the longitudinal relationship between receiving corporal punishment (CP) and perpetrating physical and psychological CPA in adolescents. The second aim was to investigate whether receiving CP in a positive parenting context, age and sex of the adolescent, moderated the relationship between CP and CPA. A total of 896 adolescents (527 girls) between the ages of 13 and 19 (M = 14.88; SD = 1.021), completed measures of CPA, CP and positive parenting at Time 1 and six months later. The results showed that CP at Time 1 predicted an increased psychological CPA at Time 2. None of the variables (positive parenting, age and sex) moderated the relationship between CP at T1 and CPA at T2. These results suggest that CP is related to CPA regardless of the context in which it is used, the age or sex of the child.