Associations Between Parent and Child Antisocial Behavior: Aggression in Family Relationships as a Mechanism of Risk

The current study examined direct and indirect associations between parent and child antisocial behavior. Indirect associations were through aggressive interparental conflict and parent aggression towards children. Participants were 199 two-parent families with a child between the ages of 6 and 12 years. Mothers and fathers completed questionnaire measures of antisocial behavior, marital conflict, parenting, and child antisocial behavior. Results supported independent associations between mother and father antisocial behavior and child antisocial behavior, controlling for child age, child sex, and family income. Indirect associations were also observed in which mother antisocial behavior was associated with higher interparental conflict, interparental conflict was related to higher mother harsh parenting, and mother harsh parenting was related to greater child antisocial behavior. Findings indicate that aggressive family dynamics may play a role in the transmission of antisocial behavior from mothers to children, and that alternative mechanisms of risk may be involved in the transmission of antisocial behavior from fathers to children.