Effects of Parental Attitudes Toward Spousal Violence on Early Childhood Development and Learning Support Among Ghanaian Children

Abstract

The prevalence of condoning attitudes toward spousal violence (SV) is high in Ghana, yet much is not known about how the development of children is compromised in households where attitudes toward SV are tolerated. This study is premised on two objectives: (a) examination of the effect of parents condoning attitudes toward SV on early childhood development; and (b) investigation of the effect of parents condoning attitudes toward SV on the amount of learning support children receive from household members. Data on 2,740 children aged between 36 and 59 months were drawn from the 2011 Ghana Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey for the first objective and 1,595 households with children aged between 4 and 15 years were sourced from the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey for the second. Analytical methods employed are descriptive statistics, instrumental variable (IV), and ordinary least squares (OLS) micro-econometric estimation