a parent’s habitual use of punishment to teach or control a child, often involving harsh or coercive practices such as yelling at, threatening, pushing, grabbing, hitting, or verbally disparaging the child.
n.1. a reduction in variation in genetic traits that can occur when sampling from continually smaller groups, such that some traits ultimately become excluded from possibility. 2. a reduction in the reliability of technical instruments orin the accuracy of observers over time. See instrument drift; observer drift.