Poster #141 - Parental Support for Fighting and Nonviolence: Perceptions of Predominantly African American Early Adolescents

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Parents play an important role in the ways in which youth are socialized, including the types of messages youth receive about appropriate or acceptable behavior. Much of the research related to messages youth receive has focused on peer influences, with fewer studies focusing on parental messages. This is particularly important given findings that parental support for fighting has been positively linked with physical aggression (Farrell et al., 2010). Parents may convey a variety of messages about when it is appropriate to use aggression, particularly for adolescents growing up in contexts where they are at higher risk for victimization. The goal of this study was to identify subgroups of adolescents who differed in their patterns of perceptions of parental messages supporting fighting and nonviolence, and how these patterns are related to differences in adjustment.

Methods: Participants were a predominantly African American sample (89%) of 2,637 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students (52% female) attending three public middle schools serving urban neighborhoods with high rates of violence and poverty. Students completed the Parental Messages about Fighting and Nonviolence scale (Farrell et al., 2010), on which they rated the likelihood that their parents would tell them specific statements about the use of both violent and nonviolent responses under various circumstances. They also completed measures of their frequency of aggression and victimization, and their own beliefs about the use of aggression. We conducted latent class analyses to identify subgroups of youth who differ in patterns of parental messages. Additional analyses to identify differences across the resulting subgroups are in progress.

Results: Preliminary analyses supported a five-class solution that identified classes of youth who reported that their parents conveyed messages that: generally supported fighting (19%); provided some support for nonviolence, but high support for self-defense (16%); provided strong support for nonviolence with high support for self-defense (24%); provided mixed support for both fighting and nonviolence (30%); and did not reflect clear support for either fighting or nonviolence (13%). Additional analyses are being conducted to examine sex differences, and subgroup differences on students’ self-report of their frequency of aggression and victimization, self-efficacy for non-violence, and beliefs about fighting and nonviolent alternatives.

Conclusions: Adolescents perceive a mixture of messages from their parents about when it is appropriate to use aggression versus nonviolent alternatives that is more complex than can be captured by summary scores reflecting support for fighting versus nonviolence. This may be particularly true for adolescents growing up in contexts where parents believe that aggression may be necessary to avoid physical harm or damage to social status. Identifying which patterns are related to adaptive versus poor adjustment and coping has important implications for developing appropriate interventions.

Authors

• Jasmine Coleman, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Presenting Author

• Kelly E O'Connor, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Albert Farrell, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Non-Presenting Author