After studying thousands of children and adults in every major ethnic group in America as well as internationally, it is clear that children’s need to be loved by parents and other significant caregivers is a universal, probably biologically based, human need. When children don’t get this need satisfied adequately they tend to respond in the same way—without regard to differences in race, gender, ethnicity, language, or other such defining conditions. In addition, research reveals that the negative effects sometimes associated with such parental behaviors as corporal punishment and restrictive control are most often due to the feelings of rejection that those behaviors may produce in children, but not to the punishment or control itself.

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