Estudio de Conocimientos, Actitudes Prácticas en materia de Patrones de Crianza en Costa Rica. Informe Ejecutivo de la Encuesta Nacional sobre Patrones de Crianza

Costa Rica unquestionably made major strides in the protection and promotion of children’s rights to be protected from all corporal punishment, when in 2008 its Legislative Assembly passed the Law on the Rights of Children to Discipline without Physical Punishment, prohibiting corporal punishment of children as a method of discipline by parents and guardians. As a follow-up to the approved law, a national baseline was published in 2010 on Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) on parental patterns of upbringing. The objectives of the KAP survey, which was carried out between November-December 2009, consisted mainly in: measuring the attributions and parents’ attitudes about childrearing; determining prior disciplinary expieriences/ effects on behaviour of care staff working with children and adolescents; identifying social support networks available for caregivers and educators; assessing the prevalence of non-violent parenting patterns vs prevalence of corporal punishment; parental/caregiver perceptions of children and adolescents; and estimating the current level of knowledge of the law prohibiting the use of corporal punishment and humiliating treatment. This last section of the report summarizes the main findings and conclusions from the survey.