Sociodemographic Factors and Parental Verbal Abuse in Indonesia

INTRODUCTION: educating children with verbal shouting is still standard. Social norms accept it as a strategy for disciplining children. Verbal violence will affect psychological conditions and impact the psychological development of children at a later stage. This study aims to analyze the relationship between sociodemographic factors and parental verbal abuse. METHOD: The convenience sampling was used to select 225 participants. Data collection using sociodemographic instruments and verbal violence. Data analysis with chi-square test, simple logistic regression and multiple logistic regression. RESULT: 82.7% (n=186) parents did not use verbal abuse and 17.3% (n=39) did verbal abuse. The incidence of parental verbal abuse was significantly related to the variables of family income, mother's occupation and ethnicity (p < 0.05). Odds Ratio (OR) 4.6, ethnicity from outside Java has five times the higher effect on verbal violence than ethnicity from Java after controlling for the mother's income and occupation variables. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION: Sociodemography is a factor that can predict the incidence of parental verbal abuse. Community mental health nursing must give verbal abuse education to parent-to-be guidance classes in primary health centres, family welfare clinics or religion-based premarital courses.