Parents Largely Responsible for Kids' Aggressive Behaviors

The results of a new study by investigators at the University of Minnesota reveal that children who lash out against others in kindergarten, and who are also more violent and aggressive, usually behave this way after experiencing bad relationships with their mothers from an early age.

These tumultuous connections between mother and children is one of the root causes of childhood aggression. The investigation was carried out on young children, who were followed from birth until they entered the first grade.

“Before the study, we thought it was likely the combination of difficult infant temperament and negative parenting that put parent-child pairs most at risk for conflict in the toddler period, and then put the children at risk for conduct problems at school age,” lead study author Michael F. Lorber, PhD, says.

“However, our findings suggest that it was negative parenting in early infancy that mattered most,” PsychCentral quotes the researcher as saying. Lorber is now based at the New York University.