Teens fight less if they think parents disapprove

Adolescents who get the message from their parents that violence is not an acceptable way to resolve conflict are less likely to get into fights with their peers, according to a survey of 134 young people and their parents on the use of violence in situations of conflict.

"There are really two parts of a parent's expectations about how they would like their child to behave," Dr. Iris W. Borowsky from the University of Minnesota told Reuters Health. "There is how they say they would tell their child to behave, and there is how their child perceives that their parent would tell them to behave"

"Our findings indicate that the child's perception of what their parent's expectations is what counts," said Borowsky.

The youths in the survey were 10 to 15 years old, and 41 percent were female. Almost two-thirds lived with both biological parents.

According to the survey results, published this month in the journal Pediatrics, parental disapproval of the use of violence is associated with a more "prosocial attitude" toward violence and a decreased likelihood of physical violence as a means of resolving conflict among young adolescents.

"The message for parents, then, is communicate with your children," Borowsky said. "Tell them how you feel about important issues, like violence, sexual behavior, and substance use."

Corporal punishment by parents, on the other hand, increased the likelihood that an adolescent would resort to violence in a tough situation or be a victim of violence.

"A second message for parents from our study is that actions speak loudest," Borowsky said.

"We found that parent's own use of violence in solving conflicts, which we measured by their use of physical punishment as discipline, was most powerfully associated with all the measures of youth violence that we looked at including, fighting, bullying and being the victim of violence and bullying," the researcher explained.

Parents, Borowsky advised, would do well to "clearly communicate" to their children alternatives to physical violence that they can use in solving conflicts non-violently and, "importantly, model those non-violent behaviors for your children in the way you yourself handle conflict."

SOURCE: Pediatrics, February 2006.