See Also: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Bibliography
Clarke-Stewart, Alison, Susan Friedman, and Joanne Koch. Child
Development: A Topical Approach. New York: John Wiley and
Sons, 1985.
Damon, William, ed. The Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol.1: Theo-
retical Models of Human Development. New York: John Wiley
and Sons, 1998.
Raymond Buriel
Terri De Ment
DISCIPLINE
Discipline is the practice of guiding children’s behav-
ior toward an acceptable direction as judged by par-
ents, teachers, and society. Discipline can take many
different forms, including corporal punishment,
which is characterized by physical contact between the
parent (or teacher or some other adult) and the child;
time-out, where the child is removed from the setting
in which the misbehavior occurred; and nonphysical
punishment, where an unpleasant, but not physical,
consequence follows the behavior. While discipline
can take many forms, the results of many studies indi-
cate that nonphysical punishment, accompanied by
an explanation, is most effective in changing a child’s
behavior. Physical punishment sets a poor role model
to resolve conflicts and deal with problems, and sup-
presses but does not replace misbehavior.
See also: CORPORAL PUNISHMENT; PARENTING
Bibliography
‘‘Alternatives to Discipline.’’ Available from http://
childparenting.about.com/parenting/childparenting/gi/
dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http//www.awareparenting.
comtwenty.htm; INTERNET.
‘‘How to Discipline Children.’’ Available from http://
childparenting.about.com/parenting/childparenting/library/
blhowto.htm; INTERNET.
Kennedy, Rodney Wallace. The Encouraging Parent: How to Stop Yell-
ing at Your Kids and Start Teaching Them Confidence, Self-
Discipline, and Joy. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001.
Neil J. Salkind
DIVORCE
Changing economic and social conditions at the be-
ginning of the twentieth century created public con-
cern about family breakdown and ushered in the
scientific study of marriage and the family. Central to
this emerging science was the identification of the
causes, correlates, and consequences of marital disso-
lution. Increased divorce rates over the course of the
century ensured continued focus on this topic and re-
sulted in a large body of research on the impact of di-
vorce on children.
Divorce Rates and Demographics
Divorce rates in the United States showed an up-
ward trend from the late nineteenth century to the
late twentieth century, rising from 0.3 divorces per
1,000 people in 1867, the first year for which national
data are available, to a peak of 5.3 per 1,000 people
during the period from 1979 to 1981. In the 1980s
the divorce rate stabilized and began trending down-
ward, with a figure of 4.4 divorces per 1,000 people
recorded for 1995. It is projected that approximately
one-half of the first marriages of the baby boom gen-
eration will end in divorce but that the rate will de-
cline to 40 percent for the generations that followed
the baby boomers. The median length of a first mar-
riage that ends in divorce is eight years, and three out
of four men and two out of three women remarry. Di-
vorce is a more likely outcome for second marriages;
approximately 60 percent end in divorce after a me-
dian length of five to six years.
Several factors increase the probability of divorce.
Briefly, divorce rates are almost twice as high for
black as for white families, two to four times higher
for individuals who marry while in their teens, about
50 percent higher for couples who lived together
prior to marriage, and about 25 percent higher for in-
dividuals whose own parents were unmarried at their
birth or whose parents were separated prior to the in-
dividual turning sixteen. Higher education levels are
related to lower divorce rates, which is due in part to
the tendency for more highly educated individuals to
marry later and to have been raised in intact families.
Families with one or two children are less likely to di-
vorce than those without children or those with more
than two children. Divorce rates in families with a pre-
school child are about half of those for childless fami-
lies and lower than those for families with school-age
children; however, this protective effect may be limit-
ed to firstborns. Thus, the likelihood that a child will
experience a divorce depends on a number of social
and demographic factors.Impact of Divorce on Children
Researchers have consistently found that children
from divorced families score significantly lower on a
variety of indexes of well-being compared to children
from two-parent families. An analysis of ninety-two
studies involving 13,000 children found, however,
that the differences are small, ranging from .08 of a
standard deviation for psychological adjustment (e.g.,
depression, anxiety) to .23 for conduct problems
(e.g., aggression, delinquency). Intermediate-sized
differences were found for academic achievement
(.16), social adjustment (.12), and self-concept (.09).
Similar differences emerged across thirty studies con-
ducted in the 1990s.122 DISCIPLINE