Parental influence on children's self-estimated agressiveness

Parental influence on children's self-estimated aggressivences was measured with inventories. One hundred seventy-four adolescents (85 girls and 89 boys; mean age 13.6 years, SD 0.7) from a suburban school, known as prone to problems of aggression, served as subjects. The dependent variable aggresive personality was measured with the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory [J consult Psychol 21:343, 1974]. Parental influence was measured with scales specifically developed for the present research. the subjects estimated: 1) their emotional relation to each parent; and 2) their perception of how their parents a and b) behave when angry c) at home and d) with their peers. The results revealed clearly gender-specific efects: mothers and fathers affected sons and daughters differently. According to LISREL analyse, mother had a clearly stronger impact on sons, while fathers had a slightly stronger effect on daughters. In the case of fathers, hiting and alcohol abuse were, in addition to a negative emotional relationship, strong predictors of daughter's aggresivencess. However, aggressive fathers tended in general to get a counterreaction with their sons, leading to low aggressiveness with the same type of behavior in their case. Typical maternal predictors of children's aggressivencess were shouting and a negative emotional relationship. In the case of daughters, the former was a more important predictor than the latter, but in the case of sons, it was the other way around. Modeling effects were revealed: subjects imitated their parents' styles of behavior in anger, however, with different patterns at home and with peers. The results may be interpreted as support for both the cognitive learning and the frustration-aggression hypotheses as sources for aggressive behavior. © 1992 Wiley-Liss, Inc.