• Friendships play a critical role in children’s social and emotional development.
• Children with autistic traits have difficulty with socioemotional skills, putting them at risk for peer rejection.
• Autistic children who are also aggressive or disruptive are particularly vulnerable.
• Parents and teachers can support children with autism through early interventions targeting socioemotional skills and lessons about peer acceptance for all children.

Friendship and acceptance by other children are vital ingredients for thriving young lives and are at the heart of growing up. They help children get out of bed in the morning, and encourage them to look forward to attending school, playing and learning, and building relationships. In contrast, loneliness, isolation, feeling awkward, and being bullied make everything more problematic. How do we ensure that the lives of children with autistic traits are not harmed by rejection?

Children with autism typically experience challenges developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships. They want friendships but struggle to make them. Mostly, they have difficulties adjusting their behavior to suit various social contexts.

Children with autistic traits who also have behavioral problems need the most support with their peer relationships.

They may not be able to communicate in ways that lead to friendship or understand how to share imaginative play in the same ways as typical children do. How does this impede acceptance and fruitful relationships at school? What can be done to improve this aspect of life for children with autism?

My colleagues and I have been studying five- and six-year-olds in primary schools in the Netherlands (called elementary schools elsewhere). The children had varying levels of autistic traits, often at such low levels that it was not clinically diagnosed. We know that young children with autistic traits are more likely to experience rejection and non-acceptance, even when the traits are at a low level.

The impact can be considerable. Studies show that having a friend at school can protect a child from an unwanted situation or behavior. A friend can act as a source of emotional support, providing a safe space to express thoughts, experiences, and opinions.

Photo: Wallpaper Flare.

Being without a friend at school can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation, which can, in turn, make children vulnerable to bullying and negative behaviors. These experiences can have lasting effects on overall well-being, leading to low self-esteem and poor academic performance.

Risk of aggressive behavior

Our study identified a particularly vulnerable group of young children with autistic traits: those who are also aggressive and disruptive. Children with autistic traits who also have behavioral problems need the most support with their peer relationships. Other children tend to isolate them or make them targets of bullying.

Schools can address these matters through programs designed to improve peer relationships in inclusive classrooms. Some programs focus on reducing children’s behavior problems (e.g., aggressive acts, poor temper control, sadness, anxiety, fidgeting, impulsive acts), especially when the problems are above and beyond the autistic traits that most convincingly predicted poor relationships in our study.

In many cases, children with autistic traits can and do have friendships and experience acceptance.

Successful friendships

Our study also considered children with lower levels of autistic traits (whose autism may not have been diagnosed) and with non-aggressive behaviors. As noted earlier, their condition was associated with less peer acceptance and more rejection. It may be hard for these children to carry out basic social skills such as starting and maintaining conversations, taking turns, and responding appropriately to social cues. They may find it difficult to understand others’ minds, and to decode others’ intentions, emotions, and thoughts, leaving them confused, so it is important to help these children navigate social situations more effectively.

In many cases, children with autistic traits can and do have friendships and experience acceptance. Other children seem to find ways to engage with them. In some cases, particularly in inclusive environments, a peer understands that a child has autism. A teacher might explain the condition and the peer develops a friendship with the child, accepting that it will be a different kind of friendship that is less reciprocal than their friendships with neurotypical children.

Photo: Leeloo Thefirst. Pexels.

How to support young children

Our findings suggest many opportunities for improving the relationships of children with autistic traits. The first step is recognizing and accepting the trait, not denying it. Parents should be alert: A child who initially responded to their name might suddenly, around 18 months, cease to respond. That can be a red flag.

Much can be done to help a child with autistic traits interpret a world that can seem confusing. With children as young as three, flashcards attached to everyday activities – waking up, having breakfast, taking a nap – can help build a vital vocabulary.

Likewise, photos of parents or caregivers highlighting labelled emotions – such as happy, sad, tired – can help train a child to better recognize facial expressions, improving the reciprocity and responsiveness of their interactions. Parents can role play what happens when other people visit, going through the language of meeting and greeting. It helps to start early.

The message from our research is that friendship and acceptance matter a great deal to each child’s development, both socially and academically. Adults can help children enjoy friendships by spotting traits of autism early and intervening in appropriate ways. Such interventions should address aggression, which is most harmful to children’s chances of having successful relationships.

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Research shows that hitting children of kindergarten age harms their literacy skills through eighth grade.

A detailed statistical analysis of data collected from over 21,000 children in the United States  sheds new light on how harsh parental physical discipline during the kindergarten years can lead to reduced literacy in the subsequent eight years. Literacy is important because reading is a foundation of learning: Children learn to read and they need to read to learn.

Children with parents who frequently use physical discipline when the children are of kindergarten age are more likely to exhibit externalizing behaviors (e.g., aggression, acting out) in first grade, and such behaviors are likely to interfere with subsequent literacy development through eighth grade. In other words, the link between harsh parenting and reduced literacy skills can be explained by the fact that children who are hit are more likely to behave disruptively at school, which impedes their learning to read.

Based on this finding, the authors make three recommendations.

• Researchers should investigate more closely how teachers respond to children who act out in class to see how this results in reduced learning on the part of the child.
• Teachers and others who support parents should inform them about the negative effects of harsh discipline on children’s socioemotional development and subsequent impairment of literacy skills. They should teach parents alternative forms of discipline, such as setting limits, providing reminders about rules, and explaining the consequences of behavior, all of which are correlated with prosocial behavior and empathy.
• Education policy makers and managers should ensure that educators target the whole child by addressing their socioemotional learning, too.

The data in this analysis were drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K). The nationally representative cohort consisted of 21,260 children from 944 kindergarten programs in the United States. Children’s externalizing and internalizing were assessed by asking teachers to rate the children. Literacy skills were directly measured by assessing the children. Parental discipline was assessed via a questionnaire that asked parents about discipline, warmth, and emotional supportiveness.

The picture from earlier research

 Research has shown a correlation between harsh parenting and reduced language comprehension, reduced vocabulary, and poorer reading in children. But how this happens has been unclear.

Harsh parenting – for example, shouting, threatening, shaming, spanking, slapping, pushing, or hitting with an object – is clearly linked to impaired social and emotional development in children. This kind of parenting is also correlated with more aggression, hostility, and disruptive behavior on the part of children.

This kind of behavior in children is also linked to less optimal academic performance. The hypothesis with the strongest evidence to explain this is the adjustment erosion hypothesis; it holds that impulsivity, hostility, and other such behaviors disrupt learning. These behaviors can even lead to children being excluded completely from the classroom or school. An alternative hypothesis – that academic incompetence comes first and leads to disruptive behavior — is not backed as strongly by evidence, especially in the early school years. However, influences in both directions do seem to exist.

This new statistical analysis confirms these associations, going further than previous research to find a correlation between harsh parenting during the kindergarten years and decreased literacy skills eight years later.

In this study, children’s externalizing symptoms in first grade completely mediated the relation between parents’ physical discipline in kindergarten and the development of literacy between kindergarten and eighth grade. In addition, children’s externalizing symptoms in first grade partially mediated the relation between parents’ physical discipline in kindergarten and children’s eighth-grade literacy levels.

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Physical punishment of children has emotionally and psychologically negative effects across cultural communities, hindering developmental potential.

The increased focus on the rights of children worldwide has drawn greater attention to child maltreatment and the lost developmental potential of children who live in difficult social and economic circumstances. Yet depending on economic resources and political and social will, attention to physical discipline remains elusive in several low- and middle-income countries. In the main, such discussions are much needed at the societal and local levels in many of the poorer nations of the world to further advance the rights and welfare of children in today’s global community.

Across cultural communities, parents and caregivers use different levels of psychological control (e.g., making children feel worthless, guilty), physical control (e.g., restraining, hitting children), and behavioral control (e.g., setting limits, offering structure) during childrearing. In high-income countries, high levels of psychological, physical, and behavioral control affect children’s social adjustment and academic performance negatively. However, it remains unclear whether these effects generalize to low- and middle-income countries, where endorsement of the use of physical punishment can be high. At the same time, there appears to be a good deal of confusion among parents across low- and middle-income countries about physical punishment and discipline. Physical punishment is meant to inflict pain in the child as a way of dealing with behavioral difficulties and noncompliance. By contrast, discipline is meant to teach children desirable ways of behaving through redirection, explanation, reasoning, and induction.

Photo: Kelly Sikkema. Unsplash.

As august bodies (e.g., American Academy of Pediatrics, 2018) and researchers continue to warn about the developmental risks associated with physical discipline, it is beneficial to weigh in on what we know about the impact of harsh parenting in the developing countries of Africa. Over the last two decades, we have assessed the impact of harsh parenting across multilingual Caribbean countries. In diverse Caribbean countries, there is high endorsement of the use of physical discipline, but the outcomes of physical discipline on children’s social and cognitive skills are inconsistent. Here, we share findings from an analysis in about half of the countries in Africa of the links between maternal use of nonphysical discipline (explaining), harsh physical discipline (hitting child with an object), physical discipline (spanking), and psychological aggression (berating child) and preschoolers’ social skills, literacy skills, and behavioral difficulties. Our analysis drew on the UNICEF Micro Indicator Surveys of 32,817 biological mothers and their children in 25 African countries: Algeria, Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Swaziland, Togo, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe.

What implications might harsh and non-harsh forms of discipline have for child development in Africa? In our research, a high percentage of mothers used explanations with children, but endorsement and use of physical discipline were also prevalent across countries. Across countries, harsh physical discipline, physical discipline, and psychological aggression were each associated with higher levels of behavioral difficulties such as biting, hitting, and kicking other children and adults. That is, berating children had adverse effects on children that were similar to using physical discipline. Not surprisingly, non-physical discipline that involved the use of explanations and redirection was positively associated with children’s literacy skills. Only harsh physical discipline was negatively associated with children’s social skills, such as displaying independence and following directions.

“Some researchers have argued that in cultural communities where physical punishment is seen as an appropriate method of discipline, the effects of harsh discipline on child development should be less severe. Our analysis offered little support for such a proposition.”

Some researchers have argued that in cultural communities where physical punishment is seen as an appropriate method of discipline, the effects of harsh discipline on child development should be less severe — the normativeness hypothesis. Our analysis offered little support for such a proposition and instead suggested that harsh forms of maternal discipline have direct negative consequences for children’s behavior and early literacy skills across the African countries we studied.

These findings from 25 low- and middle-income African countries add to the growing body of evidence on the harmful effects of harsh parenting practices on child development. Moreover, developmental risks associated with harsh forms of discipline become magnified in families with poor material resources, poor access to health care, in the presence of neighborhood difficulties (e.g., violence), and with limited access to preschool education. It is difficult for children to show prudential interest in their social world and moral concern for others when parents hit, slap, pull, and belittle them.

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Children need to be empowered to seek help about bullying and to be helpful.

When my daughter was in the second grade, the boys started a silly game during recess of grabbing the girls’ coats at the neck to stop them in their tracks. Of course, after a few days, the girls “told on them” – complaining to the teacher on playground duty about the boys choking them. The teacher’s well-meaning response was to tell the girls to play near her so they would be safe. The girls went on to tell their own teacher who, in turn, told the boys’ teacher, but the game continued. My daughter then told me – a child psychologist who is supposed to know what to do! We decided to write to the principal for help. My daughter dictated and I wrote it all down. She took the note to the principal and the game stopped. What is the point here? Seeking help is important for children, and the other side of this interaction is that adults need to respond to children’s requests for help.

“Our children deserve to feel safe at school. How can schools and parents work together to prevent conflicts before they become bullying?”

Conflict is normal in children’s interactions with their peers at school – just as it is normative in our interactions with other adults at work, at home, and in the grocery store. Not all peer conflict is bullying or results in bullying, but repeated aggression that targets children who are perceived as less powerful or different in some ways (often due to gender, race, ethnicity, disability, behavioral problems, or mental health) is bullying. Our children deserve to feel safe at school. How can parents work with their own children and schools to prevent conflicts before they become bullying?

Our own research highlights two social behaviors of children that make a difference in reducing aggression and emotional problems and in enhancing school climate. We call these social responsibility and prosocial leadership. The former is essentially about being a cooperative social member of a classroom or family, while the latter is about facilitating others’ work and well-being, and looking for opportunities to help. These two protective factors are incompatible with bullying and victimization of peers, and they can be enhanced by both home and school activities.

Photo: ihtatho. Creative Commons.

Consider how these two prosocial behaviors of children might work in families. Does your family generally cooperate in making your family environment positive, safe, and fair? Do the children in your family generally have opportunities to make valued contributions to your family’s everyday life? Sometimes? No? Yes?  Creating a positive family climate is a lifelong endeavour that encounters both smooth winds and heavy storms. It is not static. All family members from all kinds of family structures have changing needs and different abilities to contribute to overall family well-being. Children’s abilities to contribute reflect differences in their ages, but also differences in their sense of belonging to a cooperative team that is trying to create well-being for everyone.

How? One factor that can make a difference is to find a way to open conversations about conflict and conflict resolutions. Being part of your family’s well-being requires that you have input into its functioning. Responding to conflicts and aggressions with silence allows conflicts to be repeated unchanged. Having a family plan for managing the inevitable day-to-day conflicts of interpersonal interactions is as important as having a plan for fire prevention or emergency responses. In my intervention research, we have developed and tested a plan that is working in schools, with family support. The WITS Programs open conversations about conflict by using a common language. WITS stands for Walk Away, Ignore, Talk it out, and Seek help. When adults respond with this practiced, common language, we present conflicts as solvable. “Did you use your WITS?” or “What WITS did you try?” The program also identifies “WITS PICKS,” children’s books in the popular domain that present conflicts in which children have opportunities to talk about how they handled them and what else they could do. Many of the books are read online and are free to access.

“One thing that can make a difference is to find a way to open conversations about conflict and conflict resolutions.”

Using your WITS is not the only way to have open conversations about conflict. Many families establish their own routines, like reflecting on and talking out conflicts when everyone is calm or at bedtime, making a siblings plan for taking turns, and valuing family kindnesses and contributions Families can also talk about movies and TV programs in which the characters resolve conflicts. Thinking about what you do in your family and making these routines visible to children is important. Young children like to know what is the right thing to do. Seeking help can be rejected as “tattling” or embraced as problem solving.

Children need to be empowered to seek help and to be helpful. Parents can create opportunities and family cultures that make a difference in their abilities to resolve conflicts, and they can support schools in their efforts to do the same. By opening conversations about resolving conflict at home and in school, you can help your own children enhance their social responsibility and prosocial leadership, which can make a difference in improving school cultures.

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Mom or dad sharing and modelling how to manage aggression and upset may explain why some impoverished young children grow up more resilient.

Why do some children who are raised amid poverty, risk and danger emerge as more resilient than others in similar circumstances ? Why do some grow up relatively unscathed compared with their peers, whose later lives may be scarred by criminality, poor mental health, and repeated disadvantage?

Having a calm, supportive parent when something goes wrong may be part of the answer. That’s a mom or dad who responds to early childhood frustration, anger, anxiety or tantrums by neither suppressing those emotions nor ignoring them. Rather, such parents are empathetic and understanding, and they help children to steady themselves. They also model this steadiness in the way they deal with the adversities that they encounter. That’s not easy for parents who may themselves be struggling with multiple challenges. But our research suggests that doing it well can make a big difference for their children.

Emotionally supportive parenting has long term impacts

This parental skill of helping young children handle their emotions – in difficult social and economic circumstances that may provoke many strong feelings – can support emotional self-management. This in turn enables young children to concentrate better at school and get along with others. We know from other studies of self-regulation that, in the longer run, these skills help children to grow up at lower risk of anxiety, depression, violent behavior and criminal acts. As adults, they operate better at work, at home and within the law.

We’re not necessarily talking about parents working miracles amid adversity. Emotionally supportive parenting can’t turn around every impact of the many difficulties faced by children who, in their early years, may experience poor, crowded housing, an inadequate diet, and insufficient stimulation, surrounded by badly resourced neighbourhoods. But our research shows that, for these children, emotionally supportive parenting can flatten the curve: it can at least stop things from getting worse.

“What do parents do, when, for example,  a young child becomes angry because someone has done something unfair to them, such as take their toy?”

Our study examined the relationship between emotion-related parenting and externalising symptoms such as aggression across early school years among 207 children (two-thirds of them boys) from high-risk urban communities in the United States, who showed aggressive/oppositional behaviors when they started school. Their mothers’ level of supportive, emotion-related parenting was observed in the year of kindergarten during structured interactions at home. Our measure captured how parents responded to children’s emotions, how parents talked about emotions, and the way parents expressed their own emotions. Teacher ratings of externalising symptoms, including aggressive and rule-breaking behaviors, were then measured every year to the second grade.

Aggression rose amid less-skilled parenting

Aggressive behavior worsened among children who lacked emotionally supportive parenting. Each year, teachers reported seeing more problems than in the year before. In contrast, when mothers offered supportive emotion-related parenting, the children did not necessarily improve, but they didn’t get worse. Emotionally supportive parenting seems to halt the escalation in aggression as children grow older, which, research shows, can predict so many difficulties in later life.

In practical terms, we are talking about what parents do, when, for example, young children become angry because someone has done something unfair to them, such as take their toy. A child might want to scream, start crying or punch the child that took the toy. But a parent can encourage a range of strategies to help the upset child avoid following this first impulse.

Doing so might be difficult. The parent might be struggling with a host of other serious issues, such as how to pay the rent, living in a dangerous neighbourhood and parenting a difficult child. These problems can weigh on the parents, making it hard for them to sympathise in the moment about the relatively insignificant problems faced by their child. Mom or dad’s response might be: ‘Life’s unfair. You have no idea. I hate my job.’ They might think it best to toughen up the child to face disappointments, telling them to suck it up and cope with it.

But that’s not as helpful – even when the upset seems to be around something apparently trivial – as when a parent sympathises, talks things through, and helps the child understand their feelings. Simply labelling an emotion, saying it is normal, helps children regulate their reactions. Parents can also help children develop a step-by-step strategy when feeling upset, such as taking deep breaths and calming themselves. Afterwards, parents might say, ‘I’m sorry that your toy was taken, but let’s leave it in the past and do something fun now.’ That can help children who are feeling negative to know that their emotions are understood while giving them a way of coming back and feeling better.

Opportunities to model emotion-related parenting

A lot of parents also find opportunities in daily life – when a young child is not expressing emotions – of exploring feelings and how to handle them. When parents and children read a book, they might encounter a character who is experiencing difficulties. That’s an opportunity to talk about what the character is feeling and what the character could do.

Parents can also model how they deal with their own stress. Parents are the gateway to the world for young children. Stress can either flow through parents by affecting how they respond to their children, or parents can make the decision to demonstrate how stress can be handled. This doesn’t mean parents should hide their emotions, or the fact that they are upset or scared. Children are way too good at picking up on that. It’s better for parents to acknowledge that they are worried and explain how they are going to handle what’s going on. They can say: ‘This is how we will resolve it and, if you are worried about it too, let’s do something together about it.’ These parents are modelling that emotions are normal and that there are ways to manage them.

In our research sample, we did not see a lot of emotionally supportive parenting. Only 10 per cent of the mothers showed consistently emotionally supportive parenting. But where they could offer it, we saw a flattening of the curve, so that, over time, the increased aggression and externalising behavior found in other children were less likely to occur.

Learning to be more empathetic parents 

There is potential to improve this picture further. Few programs specifically focus on emotion-related parenting. One that does so is Tuning in to Kids, which has been tested in low- to middle-income families in Australia. This program had moderate to strong effects, at least in the short term, in improving parents’ supportive behaviors and in reducing parents’ dismissive reactions to children’s emotions.

“Emotionally supportive parenting seems to halt an escalation in aggression as children grow older, which can predict so many difficulties in later life.”

It has also been shown to be effective when implemented in families with children who already demonstrated behavioral problems (similar to our sample), or went through traumatic experiences. And researchers also found improvements in children’s behaviors when parents participated in the program, compared to a control group. This evidence suggests that there may be strong potential to promote supportive, emotion-related parenting behaviors through training programs, even for families in disadvantaged situations.

Many other parent training programs, such as Triple-P and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, may not specifically target emotion-related parenting, but they include components that try to promote parents’ sensitivity to children’s emotional cues, such as signals that may indicate a child is upset, and teach parents skills to help children regulate emotions.  These programs have been tested in diverse populations, including families living in disadvantaged communities or families with children already showing behavioral problems. They have led to more positive parenting, such as warmth, effective discipline, and sensitivity, as well as improvements in children’s behaviors.

Parents should recognise their achievements

A key message from our research is that children may display behavior problems for many reasons, particularly given the multiple difficulties that disadvantaged families face. Parents should not beat themselves up and be judged as failures if their children continue to have behavioral problems. Their interventions might be doing a lot to stop their children from getting worse amid multiple challenges. That huge achievement should be celebrated.

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The key predictor of antisocial behavior and violent crime (as opposed to nonviolent crime) is poor emotion regulation in early childhood.

A very small group of boys grow up to become involved in persistent antisocial behavior and violent offending. Research has confirmed that there are reliable predictors of antisocial behavior in boys as early as the age of two or three.

A key predictor of violent crime (as opposed to nonviolent crime) is poor emotion regulation in early childhood. Where this is linked to persistent conduct problems through childhood, particularly when combined with hyperactivity/attention problems, there is a correlation with male violence and antisocial behavior in adolescence and early adulthood.

The problem mainly relates to boys. Research has suggested that the male brain is more vulnerable to adverse influences in early childhood. See Male violence: Early childhood development predictors.

The research suggests that violence prevention programs should prioritise the development of self-regulation skills in boys living in urban poverty, through working directly with them and through parenting programs. Some programs have already been successful in this regard. The High-Scope Perry Preschool Study reduced early violent antisocial behavior by targeting self-regulation skills in early childhood. Other programs, such as the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum and Family Check-Up, have improved children’s emotion regulation and reduced conduct problems. Positive parenting is often associated with the improvement in child conduct in these programs.

Stephanie Sitnick and colleagues have carried out research into early childhood precursors of male violence and antisocial behavior in young adulthood. They studied data from the Pitt Mother & Child Project, a study that followed low-income high-risk youth from the age of one until they were 20 years old; 310 families participated at the start, and 256 were still going at the end. The researchers measured child oppositional behavior, child emotion regulation and quality of the home environment. They also measured conduct problems throughout the period (physical aggression, oppositional behavior, temper tantrums) and hyperactivity/impulsivity/low attention. At 20 years, they measured violence and antisocial behavior both through court records and by interviewing the young adults. Their key finding was the link between poor early emotion regulation and adult antisocial behavior and violence.

A considerable amount of other research has linked early childhood development problems with later male violence and antisocial behavior, particularly impulsive, reactive crimes. Correlates include:

• impairments in early executive function
• poorer recognition of facial emotions linked to antisocial behavior
• poor early attachment and rejecting parenting
• oppositional behavior in early childhood
• poor self-control, particularly for those living in poverty.

Other factors linked to violence and antisocial behavior, reviewed by Adrian Raine, include the following.

Genetics: Studies of aggression in identical versus nonidentical twins show 65% heritability for aggression. Heritability for domestic violence is over 50%. Heritability relates more to impulsive/reactive violence. The genetics are complex and the only single gene found to occur more in violent offenders is MAOA (Monoamine Oxidase-A).

Brain impairments: Neurological impairments can be seen in several parts of violent offenders’ brains relating to emotion regulation, moral decision-making and impulse control. In particular, reduced structure and reduced glucose metabolism is often observed in the prefrontal cortex. The striatum is also more likely to be enlarged. The striatum is associated with the reward system and may suggest an oversensitivity to rewards in violent offenders.

Physical influences: The research suggests a variety of physical predictors of antisocial behavior and violence.

• Poor prenatal nutrition is associated with increased risk of antisocial personality disorder in adulthood. Child malnutrition is linked to aggression in childhood. One fatty acid critical for brain development, omega-3, is not produced by the body but is present in some foods, such as fish—and countries with diets high in fish have lower murder rates.
• Maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy is linked to persistent offending. These links are stronger when other sources of stress exist, such as single-parent family status or an unwanted pregnancy.
• Alcohol consumption during pregnancy has been shown in many studies to be a risk factor for adult antisocial behavior and violence. Paternal alcohol consumption is also linked, possibly through epigenetic inheritance.
• Some birth complications, such as hypoxia, are linked to adult impulsive violent
• Lead exposure has been linked to adult antisocial behavior and violence. Lead is neurotoxic and affects boys more than girls, another indication of boys’ increased vulnerability to adverse influences in early childhood.
• Some traumatic brain injuries are linked to later violent behaviors.

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The best way to prevent chronic physical aggression in boys is intensive and long-term interventions initiated early in life targeting disadvantaged mothers.

Following research into aggression in children dating back to the 1980s, two leading researchers from Canada, Richard E Tremblay and Sylvana M Côté, have presented a wide range of factors that predict aggression and antisocial behavior in children, boys in particular. These include both genetic and social influences. Male aggression exceeds female aggression by a large margin and has done so for a long time. The ratio of female to male homicides in France 200 years ago was almost exactly the same as in the USA in 2014: 11.7:100 and 11.6:100 respectively.

The intergenerational nature of male aggression leads the authors to recommend that the best way to prevent chronic physical aggression and other antisocial behavior problems is intensive and long-term intervention initiated early in life and targeting disadvantaged mothers. This breaks the intergenerational transmission of violent behaviors.

Genetic influence on aggression

Large studies of twins have revealed the extent of genetic influence on physical aggression. Genetic factors explain 50% to 63% of the variance in frequency of physical aggression in children at 20 months. The link between genetics and physical aggression is stronger than the link between genetics and language development. However, this influence substantially diminishes as time goes on, while new influences come into play.

Parents’ life experience

When mothers report antisocial behavior during their own adolescence, their children are considerably more likely to display chronic physical aggression between the ages of 17 and 42 months. Chronic physical aggression in children is more frequent if the mother is young, poor, separated from the father, has not completed high school, has smoked during pregnancy, or suffers from depression.

This intergenerational phenomenon is exacerbated by assortative mating: mothers with poor childhood experiences are more likely to partner and have children with fathers who have had similar experiences.

A key mechanism of the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage is epigenetic change. The DNA methylation profiles of boys displaying chronic physical aggression are different from those of other boys (in 448 places on the genome in one study). Children whose mothers show more mental illness, more criminal behavior or more substance abuse have higher methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene at birth and later show higher callous-unemotional traits at 13 years of age. Similarly, boys displaying higher aggression have lower serotonin synthesis in the brain. This is linked to higher methylation of genes in the serotonin pathway.

Aggression begins early

In the 1990s, Tremblay found that physical aggression often starts in the second part of the first year after birth, substantially increasing in frequency up to the third year, then declining slowly. Aggression emerges between six and 42 months of age, after which a child would normally learn to control it. There is a substantial difference between boys and girls: 5% of boys between 17 and 29 months use physical aggression frequently, whereas only 1% of girls do.

Aggression in kindergarten and elementary school predicts aggression in adolescence

Other research by Tremblay in the 1990s in Canada showed that greater physical aggression among kindergarten boys predicts chronic physical aggression in adolescence. Another study in Canada, New Zealand and the USA found that boys showing high chronic physical aggression in elementary school were more likely to show the same in adolescence. This link was not seen for girls.

The authors note that the danger posed by aggression in childhood increases as children grow larger from 6 to 12 years of age.

In a randomized controlled trial in the early 1980s, Tremblay and colleagues found that a programme to address aggression and hyperactivity in kindergarten boys from low socioeconomic areas had positive outcomes for the children later in life: less aggression at the ages of 7 to 9, less physical aggressions and thefts at the ages of 11 to 17, increased rate of high-school completion and fewer criminal offenses in early adulthood. The programme consisted of both home-based parent training and school-based help for social and cognitive skills.

The evidence thus points to the importance of early intervention, starting at home before kindergarten.

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Male violence exceeds female violence by a very significant margin. The origins of this lie in early childhood development, with the first differences appearing in preschool.

Two researchers in the USA, Paul Golding and Hiram E Fitzgerald, have identified three areas that influence male violence during early childhood development: (1) early relationships with caregivers, (2) biological differences between boys and girls, and (3) growing economic and social inequalities among families in the USA, particularly the growing number of single-parent families.

Male violence exceeds female violence by a large margin. Starting in preschool, boys in the USA are more likely to be disciplined and suspended for behavior problems. By adolescence, boys are four times more likely than girls to be arrested for violent crime. In adulthood, male violent crime is four times more common than female violent crime. And men are seven times more likely to commit serious violent crimes, such as murder, rape and robbery. Among major ethnic groups in the USA, only Asian Americans display little difference between male violence and female violence.

Early caregiving and the emergence of male violence

Research has shown that certain deficits in early caregiving are linked to worse outcomes for boys than for girls. For example, sons of depressed mothers score lower than daughters on measures of attachment at 18 months of age. Similarly, sons who experience maternal insensitivity are more likely to display poorer executive function and more behavioral problems in primary school than girls who experience the same deficit at home.

Similar differences appear in measures of fathers’ sensitivity. For example, when fathers fail to exercise dominance during rough-and-tumble play (that is, establishing limits so that the child feels safe), boys are more likely than girls to show aggression and poor control of emotions five years later.

But the question remains: Why are boys more affected by these caregiving deficits than girls are? The authors propose that the slower maturation of boys during infancy expands the scope for stress in the social environment to have a negative impact on their development. Girls are protected to an extent by their more rapid development in early childhood.

Biological and neurobiological factors

In addition to slower development, other biological differences between boys and girls could be linked to differences in the development of male and female violence.

• Boys are more likely to have lower resting heart rates than girls, on average. Lower resting heart rates in children are associated with uncomfortable mood states, seeking stimulation, and antisocial behavior.
• Boys are more likely to have the MAOA-L gene. This gene, when combined with abusive or neglectful caregiving in early childhood, is associated with impulsive physical aggression later in life.
• Boys are exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the prenatal and perinatal periods of development and also starting in adolescence. Children’s exposure to testosterone is associated with less empathy and more aggression.
• Differences in the neurobiology of boys and girls at birth are now being studied to see whether they may point to differential vulnerability to problems in early childhood development.

Social and cultural environment

Golding and Fitzgerald consider the expanding social, economic and racial inequalities in the USA to be a critical factor in increasing the risk of male violence.

The rise of single motherhood (4% of births in the 1950s, 35% 60 years later) is one factor. Single parenthood is associated with a wide range of pressures, for example, fewer economic resources, exposure to discrimination, more likelihood of exposure to conflict, and more mental health problems. All these incur risks for a mother’s ability to care for her children, to which, as described above, boys are more susceptible.

The absence of fathers in children’s lives is linked to developmental problems in both boys and girls, but the nature of the problems are different: boys are more likely to show behavior and social problems (externalising), while girls are more likely to show anxiety and depressive problems (internalising). This differential response manifests as more aggression among boys.

Studies have shown that growing up in poor, single-parent families has differential impacts on boys and girls . Boys from such families are less likely to be employed in their 20s than are girls from the same families. Boys from these families are more likely than girls to exhibit antisocial behavior such as low self-control and delinquency.

In the coming months, the Child & Family Blog will run a series of research updates that expand on the emergence of male violence, based on a collection of research articles published this year in the Infant Mental Health Journal.

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They told each child four stories.

Two were about moral violations, drawn from the following three:

• A child hits another child to get a toy.
• A child makes fun of another child to classmates.
• A child steals food from another child.

Two stories were about breaking conventional rules, drawn from the following three:

• A child puts a backpack on the floor instead of in the cubby in order to start playing quickly
• A child gets up to get a snack from the teacher’s desk without raising a hand to ask permission
• A child calls the teacher by her first name instead of Mrs.

The researchers asked a question about each story: “How would you feel if _____?” The children selected a neutral, sad or in-between face to rate their reaction.

But the study of moral development in children faces a well-established challenge in: Are we measuring actual guilt or fear of punishment? To overcome this, the researchers then modified the question for all the stories: “If your teacher didn’t mind and let children like you do this, how would you feel if _____?”

Children who sustained their reaction to moral violations when told that the teacher did not mind, but relaxed their reaction to rule breaking, showed a greater drop in physical aggression between the time they were told the stories and nine months later, according to reports by their teachers. Put another way, among children who reacted the same way to both moral violations and rule breaking when a teacher said they were OK, aggression fell more slowly.

This finding adds to a growing body of evidence linking children’s moral development with their behaviour.

The researchers also asked teachers to assess the children’s relational aggression (e.g., excluding other children or gossiping), but they found no correlation between this type of aggression and the children’s reactions to the stories. They surmised that such correlations might emerge later, as children mature and develop a more sophisticated understanding of how relational aggression works.

This study of moral development in children is based on social domain theory, which focuses on children’s ability to distinguish between two domains: moral violations (pertaining to issues of justice, harm to others, fairness and rights) and violations of social conventions and rules. (See the Child & Family Blog article Child Development Milestones). By three or four years old, children judge moral violations to be wrong even in the absence of specific rules or authoritative prohibitions. Inability to distinguish between the two – either thinking that moral violations and rule breaking are both OK, or thinking that both are equally wrong in all circumstances – is linked to antisocial behaviour. An earlier study by the same researchers found a link between the inability to distinguish between these two social domains and aggressive behavior.

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