Family environment
Lack of attention and warmth in family relationships, child witnessing violent behavior at home, insufficient supervision and parental care of the child are risk factors for the development of violent behavior in children. Also, by practicing physical punishment and verbal aggression, the message is sent to the child that this kind of behavior gets what one wants to get. It is very likely that when a child experiences the listed experiences, he will use these experiences in his behavior with his peers. Through an Australian study, it was concluded that a child, regardless of his gender, who lives in families that function less well, is more likely to abuse other children. Worse family functioning was described through:
- lack of sympathy of the parents with the child,
- the lack of honesty and sincerity values in the family,
- reluctance to solve family problems together,
- non-freedom of expression of opinion, etc.
When talking about the connection between the family situation and peer violence, it is often heard that children who commit violence come from so-called, unsettled families, that is, families with a worse economic status or a lower level of education and the like. However, this is not always the case, and for this reason the position is once again confirmed that peer violence is a very complex phenomenon and that each case of violence should be approached individually, familiarized with the situation and act accordingly.
In the family environment, particularly aggressive behaviour by parents or incorrect educational styles such as permissive, or overly authoritative, distracted, or authoritarian, can lead to bullying.
Parents who often have aggressive attitudes or frequently resort to violence provide the wrong role model. For this reason, children who live in hostile family environments are more likely to develop bullying behaviour later. Thus, families in which borderline or clearly delinquent attitudes are widespread are obviously higher risk environments. But also, a lack of attention to their children's habits, needs, passions and interests, and educational disinterest or disengagement with them, affect the development and behaviour of children: sometimes parents are totally unprepared for what happens to their children daily.
Also, the imposition of strict rules on their part, which are then not enforced, promises of punishments that are then not followed up, or even exaggerated reactions that alternate with attitudes of indifference, lead to an increase in misconduct on the part of the children, who, as a result, are not fully able to understand and comprehend the seriousness of their actions.
The group of friends, the school environment and the social environment are influencing factors on a social level.
Bullying is also, and above all, a group phenomenon characterised by a particular dynamic, in which not only the CYPs engaged in bullying and targets play a decisive role, but also all those who appear to be uninvolved or supporters of one or the other (Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Kaukiainen, 1996). The group, in such situations, takes on the appearance of a monad (Anzieu, 1986), functioning as a self-sustaining unit in its members' need to endorse each other's anxieties through sharing. Adolescent grouping, specifically, tends to assume a self-referential task that concerns the group's well-being. Sharing becomes, therefore, the identifying and defining condition of the group, leaving the appearance of the threatening outside. Hence, in a constant interaction between the inside (to be safeguarded) and the outside (the enemy), the action becomes the expression of internal frustration that must be discharged, removed towards something other than oneself: the target (Ingrascì & Picozzi, 2002). As a collective phenomenon, it cannot be separated from the context in which it is acted out, namely the school (Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, Berts, & King, 1982). In the early work of Olweus (1983), conducted on more than 130,000 Norwegian children between the ages of 8 and 16, the author found that 15% of the students were involved, either as actors or targets, in bullying behaviour at school. Subsequent studies confirmed the incidence and prevalence of this phenomenon in schools. In Italy, the first data collected in the 1990s on a sample of 1,379 pupils between the ages of 8 and 14 indicated that 42% of pupils in primary schools and 28% in secondary schools reported having been bullied (Menesini, 2003). These studies therefore make it possible to highlight how schools can become possible places of persecution and violence (Petrone & Troiano, 2008) and how the subjects involved can be summarised in three categories: the CYP engaged in bullying behaviour, the target, the group.
Within the group, the CYP engaged in bullying behaviour often tends to seek out companions who can support him/her and approve of his/her behaviour. In fact, when he/she engages in aggression against weaker individuals, he/she receives attention and approval from his/her peers who see him/her as a brave, a 'hero'. This causes gratification and satisfaction in him/her, leading him/her to repeat his/her actions again. This attitude, which can also be contagious and repeated by observers, tends, therefore, to promote and accept forms bullying behaviours: one speaks of 'social contagion', as the other children, to assert themselves in the group, follow the CYP engaged in bullying behaviour's example.
At the educational level, the alliance between school and family is crucial. In fact, just as the parents' attitude at home has an influence on their children's behaviour, the teachers' attitude also affects their conduct at school. Teachers, therefore, will try to collaborate with parents to implement a correct education of the children and must behave consistently, condemning and severely punishing bullying attitudes that occur at school.