PARENTING & BULLYING: A REVIEW OF THE PARENT-CHILDREN RELATIONSHIP AND ITS EFFECTS ON A CHILD’S FREQUENCY OF BULLYING

Abstract

This research explores the relationship between the quality of children's relationship with their parents as perceived by the children and their frequency of bullying other children. The purpose of this research is to illustrate the importance of the parent-child relationship and its impact on bullying outcomes. I create a latent variable using confirmatory factor analysis to operationalize the parent-child relationship with several indicators provided by the Health Behavior of School-Aged Children (HBSC), 2009-2010 data set (n = 6,601). I hypothesize that children are more likely to participant in bullying if their relationship with their parents is poor relative to children who have a good quality relationship with their parents. The results of the structural equations model support this hypothesis by showing statistical significance when comparing the parent-child relationship quality to the child's frequency of bullying. The children who had a poor relationship with their parents were more likely to bully.