Impacts of Early Childhood Relational and Physical Aggression on Children’s Relationships with Parents, Teachers, Siblings and Peers

• In Event: Relational Aggression, Social-emotional Adjustment, and Relationship Domains: Investigating Different Contexts and Approaches

Abstract

Childhood aggression is known to negatively impact children’s social relationships, however, the preponderance of this research has primarily focused on the impact of aggression on caregiver-child relationships (i.e. parents and teachers) (Doumen et al., 2008). Little is known, however, about the impact of aggression on early childhood sibling and peer relationships. Moreover, previous studies in early childhood samples have been limited to investigating the impact of children’s physical aggression on relationship quality and no studies, to our knowledge, have collectively considered the differential associations between different forms of childhood aggression (i.e. relational and physical aggression) across various types of familial, educational, and peer relationships. The purpose of this paper is to expand the literature by investigating the impact early childhood relational aggression and physical aggression has on the quality of concurrent parent-child, teacher-child, sibling, and peer relationships.

Participants consisted of 114 ethnically diverse children (M age = 45.77 months, SD = 10.01 months, 40% girls) and their parents (M age = 34.34 years, SD = 6.01 years, 90% mothers) from three community-based Kindergartens in three urban, moderate-sized communities in the South Island of New Zealand. Parents reported on the quality of their relationship with their child (closeness and conflict), and sibling relationships (sibling positive involvement and conflict and rivalry) (Cronbach’s s ranged from .62-.83). Ten kindergarten teachers (87.5% female, Mage = 57.70 years, SD = 3.61 years) completed teacher-reports of children’s relational and physical aggression, teacher-child relationship quality (closeness and conflict), and children’s positive peer interactions and peer rejection (Cronbach’s s ranged from .67-.91). All teachers identified as Caucasian.

Multiple linear regressions were conducted to investigate the association between teacher-reports of children’s relational and physical aggression and the quality of early childhood relationships with parents, teachers, siblings and peers. Four models were ran with parent-child, teacher-child, sibling, and peer relationship quality serving as the dependent variables. Our findings showed that relational and physical aggression had no impact on parent-child closeness (β=0.11, p=.32; β=-.13, p=.26) or conflict (β=0.09, p=.45; β=-.02, p=.87). In contrast, relational aggression predicted high teacher-child closeness (β=0.19, p=.05) and conflict (β=0.27, p<.001) while physical aggression predicted low teacher-child closeness (β=-0.29, p=.002) and high teacher-child conflict (β=0.53, p<.001). Relational aggression had no impact on sibling relationships (p’s > .10). Physically aggressive children had fewer positive interactions with their siblings (β=-0.36, p=.00). For peer relationships, greater use of relational aggression was associated with high levels of positive peer interactions (β=0.30, p=.001) and greater use of physical aggression was associated with fewer positive peer interactions (β=-0.26, p=.006). Physical aggression, but not relational aggression, was positively associated with peer rejection (β=0.24, p=.01). The present study demonstrates the differential impact relational and physical aggression has on early familial, educational, and peer relationships.

Authors

• Cara Swit, University of Canterbury
  Presenting Author

• Seth C. Harty