The Bully at Work

studies on relational aggression in teenage girls

‘The power to squash people’:
understanding girls’ relational
aggression
Dawn H. Currie*, Deirdre M. Kelly and Shauna Pomerantz
University of British Columbia, Canada


GirlsStudy Group
Understanding and Responding to Girls’ Delinquency
J. Robert Flores, Administrator
U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

Dumping on Girls: Now That's Mean

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Dumping on Girls: Now That's Mean

 

By Mike Males 

c Los Angeles Times, Sunday Op-Ed, 30 May 2004

 

SANTA CRUZ — When teenage girls spread ugly rumors to inflate their social status, ruin others' reputations and demean those who can't fight back, we call their conduct "bullying" and "mean." So, what should we call today's wildly misleading campaign by authors, professionals and reporters that characterizes female teens as increasingly cruel "alpha girls" and gangsters who bully and put down their peers and others as never before?

 

"Girls are turning to violence more often and with terrifying intensity," Associated Press claimed in a typical story. "We can see girls falling prey to the same influences as boys," said Phil Leaf, director of the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence at Johns Hopkins University. "We're seeing the effects of children growing up in a world without adults." The "surge in girl violence," including melees by suburban and inner-city girls, "reminds him of the William Golding novel 'Lord of the Flies,' " AP reported.

 

Step back, for a moment, from the books and media stories reporting that today's "queen bees" and "girl gangs" are more vicious and violent than their predecessors.

 

August marks the 35th anniversary of "helter skelter," in which the Manson family's privileged young women slaughtered a pregnant actress, her three wealthy companions, a teenage bystander and an older couple in their Los Angeles homes. They shot and beat and stabbed their victims 200 times, hanging and mutilating their bodies and scrawled "piggies" on the walls with their blood.

 

The 25th anniversary of a 16-year-old girl's sniper attack on a San Diego elementary school was in January. Two were killed and nine wounded.

 

Fifty years ago, an avalanche of books, films and Movietone newsreels warned of skyrocketing crime by the new "violent ones" — gun-wielding "underage girls" who "start by stealing lipstick and end with a slaying."

 

Adults of every era, it seems, pronounce girls meaner, more violent, more shocking. Though there's no long-term index of "meanness," the best measures — the California Criminal Justice Statistics Center, FBI Uniform Crime reports, the Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey and the Institute for Social Research's Monitoring the Future study — show that girls today are no more — and are usually less — victimized, criminal and belligerent than they were a generation ago.

 

California teen girls, for example, are less likely to murder than any previous generation in the state since records were first kept decades ago. Girls today are arrested for homicide at half the rate of their mothers' generation in the 1960s and '70s.

 

Because other violent crimes go in cycles, commentators can paint any picture they desire. But the latest 2002 figures show California girls' violent-crime arrest rates are no higher than 30 years ago. Monitoring the Future surveys find 1 in 10 girls today reports being in a serious fight at school or work, 1 in 7 in a fight involving a group, and 1 in 100 committing armed robbery — about the same percentages the first survey found in 1975.

 

Actually, teenage-girl trends generally are encouraging. California crime and health statistics show them far less likely to die from suicide, homicide, drug abuse, guns and other violent causes than 30 to 40 years ago. They are also much less likely to be mothers, drop out of school, smoke, binge drink, drive drunk or be imprisoned than were baby boom girls in the 1960s and '70s.

 

Despite constant claims that today's girls are more troubled, unhappy and peer-tortured (central themes of psychologist/author Mary Pipher's popular "Reviving Ophelia" and other commentaries), the latest Monitoring the Future survey finds high school girls happier: 71% say they are satisfied with themselves (fewer than 3% are "completely dissatisfied"), and 83% are happy with their peers. Girls today are more positive than their mothers' generation in 1975 when 66% reported being happy with themselves.

 

While authorities trumpet that girls' proportion of juvenile violence arrests has climbed from 1 in 10 a decade ago to 1 in 4, they fail to mention the reason: that boys' arrest rates have fallen more rapidly than girls'. From 1992-2002, violence-arrest rates of California girls declined by 20%, felony arrests fell 50% and murder arrests plummeted 70%; meanwhile, violent and felony arrests of boys dropped by 50% and murder arrest rates plunged 75%.

 

Furthermore, the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention says that changes in the law requiring police to make arrests in family-violence incidents may explain why girls' and women's arrests rose (or didn't decline as fast) compared with boys' and men's.

 

What, then, accounts for rising alarms that girls are more menaced and menacing? When examined, the claims inevitably rely on adult commentators' selected anecdotes, generalizations from troubled girls in treatment, sanitized memories of a tranquil past and omission of contradictory information. That is, the sort of assertions we'd call "prejudice" if used to describe any other group in society.

 

Creating a pleasing image of the older generation by displacing blame onto the younger one may be a more disturbing motivation behind today's "mean girls" furor. It isn't young women but baby boomers who show the most frightening trends.

 

Among adult women ages 30 to 59, felony arrest rates doubled and violence arrest rates soared by 220% in the last three decades. Today, a 40-year-old woman is much more likely to die from illegal drugs or be arrested for a serious crime than her high school-age daughter.

 

Why don't today's detractors of "mean girls" cite these alarming statistics to berate "mean middle-age women"? Because adults, like schoolgirls, observe the basic rules of bullying: Don't attack people like us or who can fight back.

 

In reality, adults who benefit financially and psychologically from spreading misleading, negative stereotypes demeaning politically powerless adolescents teach young people the value of bullying those who are weaker. The real warning of "Lord of the Flies," as Golding commented, is not children growing up without adults but mean kids emulating their meaner elders.

 

Mike Males teaches sociology at UC Santa Cruz and has written four books on adolescents.

 

Parents - Bullying information

Parents Place bullying article

Pathways Courses - The ABCs of Bullying

http://pathwayscourses.samhsa.gov/bully/bully_fs_parents.htm">

SOURCE:  SAMHA website

CONTENTS

About This Course

Table of Contents

1. School Bullying: What It Is and Why It Hurts
2. The Role of Bullies, Victims, and Witnesses
3. Factors Contributing to Bullying and Violence
4. Screening and Assessment
5. Treatment For Children and Adolescents
6. Prevention and Intervention
7. Legal and Ethical Issues

Supplements
Case Studies
Fact Sheets
References
Resources

The ABCs of Bullying
Addressing, Blocking, and Curbing School Aggression

Bullying Fact Sheets

Prevention and Intervention - Parents

What Parents Can Do

Parents are an essential element in the school's effort to create a safe and orderly learning environment.

Parents can do the following:

• Set standards of behavior, limits, and clear expectations for your child, in and out of school.
• Provide a secure attachment for your child. Make sure they know you support them and are there for them.
• Be as positive as possible with your child. The goal for parents is to provide five positive comments for every negative one directed at a child.
• Monitor your own behavior and aggression. Demonstrate behavior at home between adults that is not bullying or aggressive. Children copy parents' behaviors-good and bad.
• Provide appropriate models of conflict resolution.
• Exhibit empathetic behavior (behavior that shows you trying to understand how the other person feels).
• Offer suggestions/advice for dealing with problematic peers.
• Encourage children who are bystanders to bullying to act appropriately.
• Be concerned and responsive regardless of whether your child is the reported bully or the victim. Offer support, but do not encourage dependence.
• Become involved in your child's school life by reviewing homework, meeting teachers, reading with your child, and attending school functions.
• Build a network of other adults, parents, and students to discuss school safety and other issues.
• Give your child the social skills they need to navigate through their own school experience.
• Teach your child to have respect for differences.
• Explain the difference between an assertive (self-confident, firm) and an aggressive (violent, belligerent, hostile) response.
• Be an advocate for bullying prevention in scout groups, athletic programs, and other youth activities.
• Share stories about your own childhood experiences with bullying.

For the Child Being Bullied

The behavior of parents will differ depending on whether their child is being bullied or is bullying. Children who are bullied tend to be scared and fragile and should never be blamed for the incident. All children deserve to be treated with respect and courtesy. If a child has been a victim of a bully, parents should follow these guidelines:

• Find out in detail what happened. Listen to the child and do not interrupt until he or she is finished.
• Contact the child's teacher, school counselor, and school administrator to alert them to the incident and ask for their cooperation.
• Avoid blaming anyone, especially the victim.
• Do not encourage the child to be aggressive or strike back.
• Discuss assertive alternatives to responding to bullies and role-play responses with the child (see Prevention and Intervention-Students fact sheet).
• Be prepared to contact an attorney if the bullying continues and the school does not take appropriate action for the child.
• Encourage the school to work collaboratively with you and others to take the bullying seriously and investigate the facts.
• Keep a log book (with the child if possible) describing the incidents of harassment or bullying, when they occurred, who took part, and what was said and done. This can strengthen a parent's case when contacting the school principal and/or teachers.
• Be patient. If often takes time for someone to change negative behaviors and interactions.

For the Child Who Bullies

Parents of children who bully must work closely with the school to resolve the situation. While it is difficult for most parents to hear something negative about their child's behavior, it is very important in a bullying situation for the parents to act immediately. Children who are aggressive towards their peers are at high risk for other antisocial behaviors such as criminality and misuse of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs.

Steps parents can take include the following actions:

• Find out in detail why your child is bullying.
• Listen. It is difficult to listen to criticism of your child, but remember, the child's well-being is at stake.
• Spend more quality time getting to know your child's friends and what he or she does with them. Children need to feel that their parents listen to them.
• Do not blame others for your child's behavior.
• Point out that bullying behavior is not acceptable in the family.
• Try to model appropriate methods for handling issues of power or the inequality of power.
• Specify the consequences if the bullying persists.
• Teach and role-play appropriate behavior.
• Follow up with the teacher and administration and track improvements.
• Try to channel the aggressive behavior toward something positive, such as sports, where teammates need to play by the rules. Explore other talents the child may have and help him or her develop them.

References

• Batsche, G., & Moore, B. (n.d.). Bullying fact sheet. In Behavioral interventions: Creating a safe environment in our schools (pp. 14-16). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.
• Fried, S., & Fried, P. (2003). Bullies, targets, and witnesses: Helping children break the pain chain. New York: M. Evans and Company.
• Goodman, R. F. (2003, September). Bullies: More than sticks, stones, and name calling. Retrieved January 7, 2004, from http://www.aboutourkids.org/aboutour/articles/bullies.html
• Mayer, G. R., Ybarra, W. J., & Fogliatti, H. (2001). Addressing bullying in schools. Retrieved 2/4/04 from Los Angeles County Office of Education Web site: http://www.lacoe.edu/lacoeweb/orgs/158/index.cfm
• U.S. Department of Education. (1998). Preventing bullying: A manual for schools and communities (Publication No. EQ0118B). Washington, DC: Author.
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Mental Health Services. (2003). Bullying is not a fact of life (CMHS-SVP-0052). Adapted from material prepared by Dan Olweus. Washington, DC: Author.
• Violence prevention: Bullying. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2003, from http://www.yesican.gov/drugfree/prevention.html

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Last Updated: 4/20/04

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