Abusive Parents Lead to Aggressive Children

11/05/2004

Abusive Parents Lead to Aggressive Children

"Bringing up children is not a real occupation, because children come up just the same, brought or not." - Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch

Abusive Parents Lead to Aggressive Children

The organization Statistics Canada (http://www.statcan.ca/start.html) has released results of a study authored by Eleanor Thomas, "Aggressive Behaviour Outcomes for Young Children: Changes in Parenting Environment Predicts Changes in Behaviour." This study observed 2000 children between ages 2-4, then studied again at ages 8-9. The study found that having parents who said they often used physical punishment or yelled at the child correlated with having a 39% higher score of bullying and other aggressiveness at age 2-4. By age 8-9 this correlated with 89% higher aggressiveness scores. Thomas noted that occasional physical or verbal reprimand was not considered a punitive‚ environment but that extremes of such parenting style did seem linked to developing aggressiveness in children as well.

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