This research has received two press releases, it must be important :). Serious now, raising teens can sometimes be a burden and while losing your temper can be something that everybody understands, the consequences can be dire. Most parents who yell at their adolescent children wouldn’t dream of physically punishing their teens. Yet their use of harsh verbal discipline—defined as shouting, cursing, or using insults—may be just as detrimental to the long-term well-being of adolescents.

From press release 1:

Research has shown that a majority of parents use harsh verbal discipline at some point during their child’s adolescence. Relatively little research has been done, however, into understanding the effects of this kind of discipline.

The paper, coauthored by Sarah Kenny, a graduate student in the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, concludes that, rather than minimizing problematic behavior in adolescents, the use of harsh verbal discipline may in fact aggravate it. The researchers found that adolescents who had experienced harsh verbal discipline suffered from increased levels of depressive symptoms, and were more likely to demonstrate behavioral problems such as vandalism or antisocial and aggressive behavior.

The study is one of the first to indicate that harsh verbal discipline from parents can be damaging to developing adolescents.

Perhaps most surprising, Wang and Kenny found that the negative effects of verbal discipline within the two-year period of their study were comparable to the effects shown over the same period of time in other studies that focused on physical discipline.

“From that we can infer that these results will last the same way that the effects of physical discipline do because the immediate-to-two-year effects of verbal discipline were about the same as for physical discipline,” Wang said. Based on the literature studying the effects of physical discipline, Wang and Kenny anticipate similar long-term results for adolescents subjected to harsh verbal discipline.

Significantly, the researchers also found that “parental warmth”—i.e., the degree of love, emotional support, and affection between parents and adolescents—did not lessen the effects of the verbal discipline. The sense that parents are yelling at the child “out of love,” or “for their own good,” Wang said, does not mitigate the damage inflicted. Neither does the strength of the parent-child bond.

Even lapsing only occasionally into the use of harsh verbal discipline, said Wang, can still be harmful. “Even if you are supportive of your child, if you fly off the handle it’s still bad,” he said.

Another significant contribution of the paper is the finding that these results are bidirectional: the authors showed that harsh verbal discipline occurred more frequently in instances in which the child exhibited problem behaviors, and these same problem behaviors, in turn, were more likely to continue when adolescents received verbal discipline.

From press release 2:

Moreover, the study found that not only does harsh verbal discipline appear to be ineffective at addressing behavior problems in youths, it actually appears to increase such behaviors. Parents’ hostility increases the risk of delinquency by lowering inhibition and fostering anger, irritability, and belligerence in adolescents, the researchers found.

The effect went the other way, too. Children who had conduct problems at 13 elicited more harsh verbal discipline from their parents between ages 13 and 14.

The study looked at 967 two-parent families and their children. About half were European American; 40 percent were African American and the rest were of other ethnic backgrounds. Most of the families were middle class. Students and parents completed surveys over a two-year period on topics related to their mental health, childrearing practices, the quality of the parent-child relationship, and general demographics.

Adolescents’ conduct problems were assessed at ages 13 and 14 by survey questions like “In the past year, how often have you: a) been disobedient in school, b) lied to your parents, c) stolen from a store, d) been involved in a gang fight, and e) damaged public or private property for fun?” The response format ranged from 1 (never) to 5 (10 or more times).

Parents’ behaviors indicating harsh verbal discipline were measured by questions like “In the past year, after your child has disobeyed you or done something wrong, how often have you: a) shouted, yelled, or screamed at the child, b) swore or cursed at the child, and c) called the child dumb or lazy or some other name like that?” Items were rated on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always).

“This is one of the first studies to indicate that parents’ harsh verbal discipline is damaging to the developing adolescent,” says Ming-Te Wang, assistant professor of psychology in education at the University of Pittsburgh, who led the study. “The notion that harsh discipline is without consequence, once there is a strong parent-child bond—that the adolescent will understand that ‘they’re doing this because they love me’—is misguided because parents’ warmth didn’t lessen the effects of harsh verbal discipline.

“Indeed, harsh verbal discipline appears to be detrimental in all circumstances,” Wang concludes.

Wang suggests that parents who want to modify their teenage children’s behavior would do better by discussing with them their concerns about the consequences of the behavior. The study’s findings can inform parenting programs so that parents can learn alternatives to shouting and insulting their teens.

Abstract of the research:

This study used cross-lagged modeling to examine reciprocal relations between maternal and paternal harsh verbal discipline and adolescents’ conduct problems and depressive symptoms. Data were from a sample of 976 two-parent families and their children (51% males; 54% European American, 40% African American). Mothers’ and fathers’ harsh verbal discipline at age 13 predicted an increase in adolescent conduct problems and depressive symptoms between ages 13 and 14. A child effect was also present, with adolescent misconduct at age 13 predicting increases in mothers’ and fathers’ harsh verbal discipline between ages 13 and 14. Furthermore, maternal and paternal warmth did not moderate the longitudinal associations between mothers’ and fathers’ use of harsh verbal discipline and adolescent conduct problems and depressive symptoms.