Discipline or Perish?

DETERRENCE

Authoritarian parents may deter minority youth from joining gangs, but strict discipline in a white household could have the opposite effect.

Chanequa Walker Barnes, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, found that African-American youth are more likely to interpret strict parenting as a sign of love, while white teens consider the same behavior intrusive and controlling.

Hispanic teens were more receptive to strict parents than their white peers, but only in African-American households did parental control have decidedly positive results.

Walker Barnes followed 300 Miami-area high school freshman for one year and concluded that the discrepancy may have historical roots: "During times of slavery, African-American parents had to be strict because the world was a dangerous place," says Walker Barnes. Crime and police harrassment in some communities are a contemporary parallel.

The results were published in Child Development.