Is the Country Where a Child Lives Explanatory for Exposure to Physical Punishments? Examining Patterns on the Island of Hispaniola

Determining if where a child lives (country in the case of this study) is explanatory for exposure to physical punishments is often complicated by confounders. This study determined the odds of exposure to physical punishment for children living in the Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti, the two countries that share the island of Hispaniola, after adjusting for a set of variables (socioeconomic, demographic, and belief about physical punishment). Three household samples with children between 1 and 14 years of age were extracted from national survey data from Haiti (2016–2017) and the DR (2014): (i) Haitian-Creole-speaking households in Haiti (“Creole-Haiti”) ( n = 6009), (ii) Spanish-speaking households in the DR (“Spanish-DR”) ( n = 17,094), and (iii) Haitian-Creole-speaking households in the DR (“Creole-DR) ( n = 1123). The latter group provides an opportunity to contrast an immigrant population with populations from the site of immigration and emigration. Children in Creole-Haiti compared to Spanish-DR households had higher odds of exposure to all six physical punishments in unadjusted models, which drop to four after covariate adjustment. Children in Creole-DR households had higher odds of exposure to two physical punishments compared to Spanish-DR households and lower odds of exposure to four physical punishments compared to Creole-Haiti households in adjusted models. The persistence of differences in the odds of punishment exposures between groups, despite adjusting for several potential confounders, suggests the need for further inquiry into other factors associated with where a child lives to understand variation in punishment practices. Additional study of immigrant populations may be particularly informative.