We Are Different And We Are Similar

Universals, Commonality, Diversity and Variation In Parenting and Child Development

Andy Grogan-Kaylor

2026-04-08

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Acknowledgements

• Collaborators:
  • Professor Julie Ma
  • Professor Yoonsun Han
  • Dr. Kaitlin Ward
• Members of the Global Families Project
• IPUMS
• NICHD

A Challenge For All Of Us

Click To See The Challenge

The Big Ideas

The Scope of the Issue

• UNICEF considers children globally to be in crisis: political violence, climate change, and poverty affect many children (UNICEF, 2024a, 2024b).
• In this time of crisis, parenting is one crucial area of focus.
• According to UNICEF data, \(\frac{1}{3}\) of children are subject to physical punishment (Ward et al., 2023); \(\frac{2}{3}\) to some form of violent punishment (UNICEF, 2024a).
• In a review of 50 years of literature on physical punishment, Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor (2016) connect physical punishment to poor mental health outcomes, and other poor outcomes over the life course. Ward et al. (2023) examines the relationship of multiple forms of parental discipline to child outcomes.

Are We Similar? Are We Different?

positive parenting

countries in MICS data

Both Universals and Variation Are Important

“Despite the incredible diversity existing among and within human cultures, there are many phenomena that occur regularly in all known societies. These commonalities, or universals, while deriving in part from human nature, may also have specific social, cultural, and systemic sources. We need to develop a working understanding of these universals so that we might advance legitimate, empirically based human science set on creating knowledge that is politically relevant to fostering real solutions to the problems that complicate human co-existence in the Age of the Anthropocene.” (Antweiler, 2016)

Highlighting Commonalities May Promote Intergroup Attitudes And Solidarity

“Hanel et al. (2019) cite research suggesting that ‘highlighting similarities between groups improves interpersonal and intergroup attitudes.’ Others have argued that ‘build[ing] bonds of commonality across our differences’ might be an impetus for social transformation (Hunt-Hendrix & Taylor, 2024).”

The Argument Of This Presentation

• Families, parents and children experience an incredible diversity of circumstances.
• Parents engage in parenting behaviors with consequent diversity, though with some surprising similarities.
• The associations of parenting with child outcomes are surprisingly consistent.

The Study

Data

MICS data collected by UNICEF from Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) around the world. \(N = 224,632 \text{ families}; N_{countries} = 60\)

Contains questions about parental discipline (both positive and negative) and child aggression .

Countries in UNICEF MICS Data

Sources of Variation In The Study of Parenting And Child Outcomes

Figure 1: Sources of Variation In The Study of Parenting And Child Outcomes

Check-In

Are we OK? Are there questions?

Sources of Variation (2)

a visual version of the research question

The Equation

annotated equation

Parenting Behaviors Vary Somewhat Across Countries

Verbal reasoning and shouting are the most common parental discipline behaviors toward young children.

positive and negative parenting

The Maximal Model Approach

• Hypothetically, one might imagine that there could be group level unobserved factors which affect many regression slopes–i.e. the relationship between multiple predictors (e.g. \(x_1\), \(x_2\), \(x_3\), etc.) and outcome variable \(y\).
• Arguably, were one to ignore these unobserved factors in statistical estimation, they would show up either in an error term (\(e_i\) or \(u_0\)), or in the regression coefficients (\(\beta\)). This could be seen as a form of statistical bias.
• The above could lead to a substantive mis-estimation of important effects. Thus, there is a conceptual argument for including as many random effects—i.e. random slopes—in a statistical model as possible (Barr et al., 2013; Frank, 2018).
• There is also a substantive reason: We might be interested in the variation of all the random slopes!

sources of variation

Relationship of Parenting And Child Outcomes

Maximal Model of Parenting and Child Aggression Outcome

	aggress
child aggression
Sex of randomly selected child	-0.023	**
Age of randomly selected child	0.000
Selected child shouted at	0.036	**
Selected child called dumb/lazy/names	0.054	**
Selected child shaken	0.039	**
Selected child spanked	0.023	**
Selected child hit/slapped on hand/arm/leg	0.033	**
Selected child hit with belt/brush/stick/etc	0.035	**
Selected child hit/slapped on face/head/ears	0.044	**
Selected child beat as hard as one could	0.026	**
Selected child’s privileges taken away	0.007
Selected child - explained why behavior wrong	-0.014	*
Selected child given something else to do	0.004
Intercept	0.325	**
country
var(d_psych_shout)	0.001
var(d_psych_names)	0.001
var(d_phys_shook)	0.001
var(d_phys_spank)	0.001
var(d_phys_hitslap)	0.001
var(d_phys_hitobject)	0.001
var(d_phys_hitface)	0.002
var(d_phys_beathard)	0.002
var(d_nvd_privileges)	0.001
var(d_nvd_explained)	0.001
var(d_nvd_gave)	0.001
var(_cons)	0.012
Residual
var(e)	0.217
Number of observations	224632

** p<.01, * p<.05

The Relationship of Parenting And Child Outcomes Shows Little Variation Across Countries

A Standard Spaghetti Plot

a standard ‘spaghetti’ plot

A Modified Spaghetti Plot

modified spaghetti plot

Quantifying Diversity and Commonality in the Relationship of Parenting To Child Outcomes

1. Regression slopes–when statistically significant–are all in the same direction, and of at least somewhat similar magnitude.
2. The actual values of the \(\text{var}(u_{kj})\) or \(\text{range}(u_{kj})\) are small.

Wrapping It Up

To Summarize …

• There is an incredible diversity across countries, especially LMIC’s.
• However, the associations of different forms of parental discipline are surprisingly consistent.
  • Explaining to children the difference between right and wrong has consistently “good” outcomes in terms of aggression.
  • Spanking has consistently “bad” outcomes in terms of aggression.
  • Shouting has consistently “bad” outcomes in terms of aggression.
  • Name calling has consistently “bad” outcomes in terms of aggression.

Attempting a Visual Summary…

a visual summary

The Argument Of This Presentation Revisited

• Families, parents and children experience an incredible diversity of circumstances.
• Parents engage in parenting behaviors with consequent diversity, though with some surprising similarities.
• The associations of parenting with child outcomes are surprisingly consistent.

positive parenting

Implications

“My conception of the universal is that of a universal enriched by all that is particular, a universal enriched by every particular: the deepening and coexistence of all particulars.” (Césaire, 1956)

• Associations of parental discipline with child outcomes are very consistent across countries.
• This may be helpful to international organizations (e.g. UNICEF, WHO) that are developing programs or interventions that are to be applied in multiple cultural settings.
• While cultural tailoring will always be necessary to some degree; child development research can inform the foundations of widely applicable interventions.

countries in MICS data

Discussion and Questions

How might it be helpful to start thinking about possible universality, commonality, and similarity …

… while keeping in mind …

… our diversity, differences, and variation?

Other Questions?

Global Families Project

References

Antweiler, C. (2016). Our common denominator: Human universals revisited. Berghahn.

Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(3), 255–278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001

Césaire, A. (1956). Letter to Maurice Thorez. Présence Africaine.

Frank, M. (2018). Mixed effects models: Is it time to go Bayesian by default? http://babieslearninglanguage.blogspot.com/2018/02/mixed-effects-models-is-it-time-to-go.html

Gershoff, E. T., & Grogan-Kaylor, A. (2016). Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses. Journal of Family Psychology, 30, 453–469. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000191

Hanel, P. H. P., Maio, G. R., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2019). A new way to look at the data: Similarities between groups of people are large and important. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116, 541–562. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000154

Hunt-Hendrix, L., & Taylor, A. (2024). Solidarity: The past, present, and future of a world-changing idea. Pantheon Books,.

UNICEF. (2024a). FAST FACTS: Violence against children widespread, affecting millions globally. https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/fast-facts-violence-against-children-widespread-affecting-millions-globally

UNICEF. (2024b). “Not the new normal” – 2024 ’one of the worst years in UNICEF’s history’ for children in conflict. https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/not-new-normal-2024-one-worst-years-unicefs-history-children-conflict

Ward, K. P., Grogan-Kaylor, A. C., Ma, J., Pace, G., & Lee, S. J. (2023). Associations between 11 parental discipline behaviors and child outcomes across 60 countries. BMJ Open. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-058439