School children's perceptions of their families and parents as a function of peer relations

Links were examined between three dimensions of peer relating at school among Australian children and selected family and parental background factors. Questionnaires containing measures of children's tendencies to bully others, to be victimized, and to act in a prosocial manner were administered to boys and girls (N = 1,012) aged 11 to 16 years. In addition, subjects completed a standardized 42-item measure of family functioning and reliable scales assessing attitudes toward, and relationships with, their mother and father. When differences in age were controlled for, multiple regression results for both boys and girls indicated that the tendency to bully peers and the tendency to act prosocially were independently predictive of family functioning and attitudes toward, and relationships with, each parent, negatively for bullying and positively for prosocial behavior. The tendency to be victimized by peers at school among girls was found to be associated with poorer family functioning and more negative attitudes toward mothers; negative relations with absent fathers in single-parent families characterized boys who reported being victimized at school.