Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Feb 4;16(2):e0246578. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0246578. eCollection 2021.
This study considers whether orphans' experiences with physically and psychologically violent discipline differ from non-orphans in sub-Saharan Africa, and to what extent national, community, household, caretaker, and child characteristics explain those differences.
We use cross-sectional Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) administered between 2010-2017 in 14 sub-Saharan African countries. The sample included 125,197 children, of which 2,937 were maternal orphans, 9,113 were paternal orphans, and 1,858 were double orphans. We estimate the difference between orphans and non-orphans experience of harsh discipline using multivariable logistic regressions with country fixed effects and clustered standard errors.
Findings show that orphaned children experience less harsh discipline in the home. With the exception of double orphans' experience with physically violent discipline, these differences persisted even after controlling for a rich set of child, household, and caretaker characteristics.
We propose two alternative explanations for our surprising findings and provide a supplementary analysis to help arbitrate between them. The evidence suggests that orphaned children (especially those with a deceased mother) are less likely to experience harsh discipline because of lower caretaker investment in their upbringing. We encourage future research to draw on in-depth interviews or household surveys with discipline data from multiple children in a home to further unpack why orphans tend to experience less harsh punishment than other children.
本研究探讨了在撒哈拉以南非洲地区，孤儿经历身体和心理暴力管教的情况是否与非孤儿不同，以及国家、社区、家庭、照顾者和儿童特征在多大程度上解释了这些差异。
我们使用了 2010-2017 年间在 14 个撒哈拉以南非洲国家进行的横断面多指标类集调查（MICS）的数据。样本包括 125197 名儿童，其中 2937 名是孤儿，9113 名是孤儿，1858 名是双重孤儿。我们使用带有国家固定效应和聚类标准误差的多变量逻辑回归来估计孤儿和非孤儿经历严厉管教的差异。
研究结果表明，孤儿在家中经历的严厉管教较少。除了双重孤儿经历身体暴力管教的情况外，即使在控制了一系列丰富的儿童、家庭和照顾者特征后，这些差异仍然存在。
我们提出了两种替代解释来解释我们令人惊讶的发现，并进行了补充分析以帮助在两者之间做出裁决。证据表明，孤儿（尤其是失去母亲的孤儿）不太可能经历严厉的管教，因为照顾者对他们的养育投资较少。我们鼓励未来的研究利用来自多个家庭中多个孩子的深入访谈或家庭调查以及纪律数据，进一步探讨为什么孤儿往往比其他孩子经历更少的严厉惩罚。
