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Half of the parents in Serbia believe that “the beating came from heaven” and admit that they used physical violence to discipline their children in the past year. All the other parents hit a child for the first time when he was between two and three years old, which can be explained by the thesis on the “terrible second year of life”, in which children become more psychophysically restless and have seizures. go more frequently.
These are just some of the results of the research “Application of educational discipline to children in the family in Serbia”, carried out by UNICEF in cooperation with the Institute of Psychology of the Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute of Mental Health and Support from the Ministry of Labor, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs. .
A study conducted on a sample of 1,186 parents, which aimed to examine disciplinary practices applied by parents in Serbia, also showed that 91 percent of parents use non-violent discipline methods. The most common alternative to corporal punishment of children is to explain to the child why some behavior is wrong, and approximately 46 percent of parents use the call. time-out, that is, a break in the conflict as a non-violent method of education. Slightly more than half of the parents chose to prohibit outings or deprive the child of privileges rather than beatings.
An interesting geography claims that Vojvodina parents are more inclined to non-violent parenting methods, and that also applies to parents with a higher level of education. Mothers physically punish children more often than fathers; at the same time, they are the ones who participate more in stimulating and developmental activities than the parents.
The most common method of discipline is to kick a boy’s butt. Only a small number of them claim to have used more severe forms of physical violence, such as the use of hard objects such as a belt and a stick to hit a child. Less than two percent of parents admitted to grabbing a child by the neck and strangling him, threatening him with a knife or gun, or intentionally burning a child, and one in five parents admitted to hitting a child with the open fist in a fist, arm or leg.
The authors of this research are also concerned about the high percentage of psychological aggression of parents towards children: up to 68 percent of them yell at the child, half threaten with beatings and one in five parents tell their child which is stupid or lazy. The data also shows that about seven percent of parents, according to their own confession, threaten their children with kicking them out of the house for undesirable behavior. This research also confirms the thesis on the transgenerational transmission of violence: the possibility of parents “repeating” the violence to which they were exposed in childhood in relation to their children depended on the level of non-violent communication they experienced in childhood. , which acted as a “buffer”. In Serbia, as a reminder, corporal punishment of children is not explicitly prohibited, except in the school environment and social institutions.
As Dejan Konstantinova, UNICEF Director in Serbia, pointed out in yesterday’s presentation of this research, parenting is an important and challenging job, so parents need support.
– Many of them need support to develop positive parenting skills and avoid the use of violence in parenting. Achieving “zero tolerance” for violence is a long road that requires commitment, patience and consistency – said the UNICEF director.
Dr. Darija Kisić Tepavčević, Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, pointed out that the comprehensive protection of the rights of the child, the protection of the youngest against any violence is one of the priorities of Serbian policy, in accordance with the adopted principle of “zero tolerance” for violence.
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