Downward identification and parental endorsement of spanking: Evidence from mobility-based status inconsistency

Child maltreatment research has established socioeconomic disadvantage as a robust risk factor, yet socioeconomic status (SES) is almost universally treated as a static attribute. Whether the dynamic, generational dimensions of economic experience, including intergenerational mobility trajectories and the class identities individuals construct around them, are independently associated with parental endorsement of spanking remains underexplored.

To examine whether intergenerational occupational mobility trajectories and mobility-based status inconsistency independently predict parental endorsement of spanking, and whether this association differs by direction of identification.

Pooled General Social Survey data (N = 9178; waves 1986-2016), a nationally representative repeated cross-sectional survey of U.S. adults.

Intergenerational mobility trajectories were constructed using SEI-10 occupational prestige scores. Mobility-based status inconsistency was defined as the residual discrepancy between subjective class identification and objective mobility trajectory. Parental endorsement of spanking was measured with a single survey item. Sequential logistic regression models estimated associations after adjusting for parenting attitudes, education, income, and sociodemographic covariates, with a formal Wald test directional symmetry.

Mobility-based status inconsistency was independently associated with spanking endorsement in the fully adjusted model (b = -0.125, p = .005). Mobility trajectory alone carried no independent association. Decomposition analyses showed that downward identification was associated with higher spanking endorsement (b = 0.201, p = .025), while upward identification was not (b = -0.034, p = .743); a formal test of directional symmetry did not reject symmetry (χ²(1) = 0.95, p = .330).

Mobility-based status inconsistency, and downward class identification in particular, is associated with parental endorsement of spanking independently of current SES, parenting attitudes, and sociodemographic background, pointing to subjective and generational dimensions of economic experience that static SES measures do not fully capture.