The Role of Mother Involvement and Father Involvement in Adolescent Bullying Behavior

Abstract

It has been suggested that bullying behavior at school may be linked to parenting and family characteristics. Based on data from 1,147 adolescents aged 14 to 18 years in Britain, this study explored whether father involvement can protect against offspring bullying behavior. Results showed that low father involvement and low mother involvement contributed significantly and independently to bullying behavior in adolescents. Neither the association between father involvement and bullying nor the one between mother involvement and bullying was higher for sons than for daughters. There was evidence showing that the impact of the father-child relationship depended on the closeness of the mother-child relationship in that father involvement protected more when mother involvement was lower.