Cumulative Exposure to Harsh Discipline at Home and School on Child Development: Evidence From Ghana

Abstract

Violence against children violates human rights and fundamentally challenges the global objectives outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Children may frequently experience harsh discipline in both homes and schools, two main settings for early learning and development, yet longitudinal evidence on the developmental consequences of exposure to harsh discipline across these two settings remains scarce in Sub-Saharan Africa. Further, the interaction between harsh discipline at home and in school remains underexplored. Drawing on data from a longitudinal study in Ghana, we examine whether repeated exposure to harsh discipline at home and school across three years (which we define as “cumulative exposure”) among pre-primary school children aged 5–8 years ( N = 663; Mage = 6.94 years). By controlling for baseline outcomes in a value-added design, we estimated the robust associations between cumulative harsh discipline at home and at schools with higher-order cognitive skills, namely academic and executive function. Cumulative harsh discipline at home significantly predicted lower academic skills ( 𝛽= -0.045, p < 0.05) but not executive function, while cumulative harsh discipline at school did not statistically significantly predict any skills. Moderation analyses showed that children’s experiences of harsh discipline at home were negatively associated with executive function under conditions of low levels of harsh discipline at school. Findings highlight the urgent need for integrated, contextually grounded interventions targeting home and school disciplinary practices to support early learning and development in Sub-Saharan Africa.