Abstract
This study examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between peer deviance, parenting practices, and conduct and oppositional problems among young girls ages 7 and 8. Participants were 588 African American and European American girls who were part of a population-based study of the development of conduct problems and delinquency among girls. Affiliations with problem-prone peers were apparent among a sizeable minority of the girls, and these associations included both males and females. Although peer delinquency concurrently predicted disruptive behaviors, the gender of these peers did not contribute to girls’ behavior problems. Harsh parenting and low parental warmth showed both concurrent and prospective associations with girls’ disruptive behaviors. Similar patterns of association were seen for African American and European American girls. The findings show that peer and parent risk processes are important contributors to the early development of young girls’ conduct and oppositional behaviors. These data contribute to our understanding of girls’ aggression and antisocial behaviors and further inform our understanding of risk processes for these behaviors among young girls in particular.
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Notes
The enumeration process (to identify neighborhood status) was completed in 1999, therefore it was based on 1990 Census data. The 2000 Census data was then used to determine the proportion of girls age 5–8.
The analyses were repeated in the subsample of biological mothers, and the pattern of results was consistent with the larger sample.
Although the CSI includes a small number of additional items, we used 11 items in order to maintain consistency across the raters and the age 7 and age 8 assessment points.
Reports of delinquent activity across the individual items are available from the first author.
Separate analyses were also conducted for each parenting variable separately, as well as with the specific spanking item on CTS. With the exception of the significant interaction between positive parenting and ethnicity that was found previously, all other interactions between parenting practices and ethnicity were non-significant in predicting conduct/oppositional problems. When positive parenting was analyzed separately by gender (as the only parenting variable in the model), the association with conduct/oppositional problems was significant for European American girls, but not for African American girls.
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Miller, S., Loeber, R. & Hipwell, A. Peer Deviance, Parenting and Disruptive Behavior Among Young Girls. J Abnorm Child Psychol 37, 139–152 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-008-9265-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-008-9265-1