Page 27 - Disrupting the Transmission of Violence

communication skills are major challenges to the parenting role. When coupled with the
coercive modus operandi of parents, this contributes significantly to violent conflicts within

families. Coercive parenting represents the inclination to use an authoritarian parenting
style, where children are expected to submit to parental control without question, and

without receiving warmth or empathy. It includes harsh, demeaning language and
physical and emotional punishment to ensure compliance. Parenting is a critical process

affecting many developmental outcomes for children living in poverty; and this ability
is weakened by living in conditions of poverty and by the emotional and psychological

stress associated with living in poverty (Kaiser and Delaney, 1996). When poverty influences
coercive parenting practice, it requires an intentional strategy to protect the mental and

physical health of the children living in these circumstances. For many years it has been
a challenge for parents in vulnerable communities in Jamaica to influence their children

away from involvement in crime and violence through non-coercive means.

Many low-income parents live in vulnerable communities and are faced with social and
economic problems, which hinder their ability to effectively raise their children (Ricketts

& Anderson, 2009). They explained that as parents in low-income communities they

experience high levels of stress because their communities are prone to high levels of crime
and violence, poor living conditions, illegal drug trade activities and poor maintenance of
social infrastructure. Given the stressful environment in which these parents live and raise

their children it has become a common practice among many to administer discipline

using a coercive approach.

According to Smith, Dishion, Shaw, Wilson, Winter & Patterson (2014), coercive, harsh, and

conflictual parenting practices are a salient risk factor for the development of clinically

meaningful problems relating to conduct. Other researchers also believe that, similarly,
problem behaviours elicit harsher parenting from caregivers. (Frick, Cornell, Barry, Bodin,
& Dane, 2003; Gardner, Ward, Burton, & Wilson, 2003; Patterson, 1982; Shaw & Bell, 1993).

Coercive family dynamics are said to be particularly germane to the development of

early conduct problems, and to more serious forms of later antisocial behavior (Patterson,
Reid, & Dishion, 1992).

Coercion Theory describes a process of mutual reinforcement during which caregivers

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