Until recently, research on aggression and violence has focused primarily on boys. This is understandable given that boys engage in more serious acts of violence and inflict more physical injury on others at every stage of development than girls. However, over the past several decades, juvenile justice statistics have documented an unprecedented increase in the rate of violent crime perpetrated by girls. This essay summarizes trends in aggressive and violent behavior among adolescent girls, discusses sex differences in aggressive behavior, highlights key risk and protective factors, and notes pressing research questions.
Recent Trends
The rate of violent crime, particularly serious violent acts such as homicide, is consistently higher in males than in females. For example, in Canada, the violent crime rate for girls is one third of the rate for boys. Nevertheless, this rate more than doubled for girls (+127%) from 1988 to 1998, compared to a much smaller increase for boys (+65%). Moreover, there was a modest increase in violent crime rates for girls from 1996 to 2002, while rates for boys slightly decreased. In each case, the increase in girls’ violent crime reflected less serious acts such as common assault. These findings parallel statistics reported in the United States: The growth in person offenses over the last two decades has been greater for adolescent females (157%) than for males (71%). Outside North America, the picture is much the same: In the United Kingdom, between 1981 and 1999, there was a 23% decrease in juvenile male offenders and an 8% increase in female offenders.
In sum, juvenile justice statistics across several countries consistently reveal a trend toward greater involvement of girls in the perpetration of aggressive and violent acts. This trend also appears in girls’ reports about their own behavior: According to the 2001 U.S. Surgeon General’s report, the gap between boys and girls in self-reported engagement in serious aggression has shrunk by approximately 50%. These trends signal the need to fast track research on aggression in girls and develop appropriate interventions.
Sex Differences in Aggressive Behavior
The vast majority of research focuses on physical aggression and violence. Recently researchers have turned their attention to other forms of aggression, including relational aggression that involves attempts to harm others through social exclusion and public humiliation. Over the past decade, research has shown that girls engage in equal levels of relational aggression but less physical aggression than do boys. It is possible to detect relational aggression as early as preschool, and children who engage in it are more likely to suffer peer rejection and are at greater risk for deviant peer affiliation.
How serious is relational aggression? Studies show that girls suffer more than boys do when they are the targets of relational aggression, and victims show higher rates of depression, loneliness, and low self-esteem. In some contexts, social aggression may be a prelude to or co-occur with physical aggression. In their research, Marlene Marie Moretti, Ingrid Obsuth, Candice L. Odgers, and Stephanie R. Penney found a high correlation between relational and physical acts of aggression among high-risk adolescent girls. Anecdotally, these girls reported that their peer groups were often highly relationally aggressive, with rampant rumors of sexual impropriety and fast-changing loyalties that eventually escalated to acts of physical aggression. Girls differed in how well they fared in these complex social interactions. Some emerged at the top of the social ladder and were admired but feared by their peers. Others found themselves more frequently in the victim role.
The increased focus on alternative forms of aggression has prompted proposals to add female-specific symptom criteria to research and clinical protocols assessing aggression and antisocial behavior. Yet, to date, there are no empirical findings to support the inclusion of sex-specific criteria. Research is required that comprehensively maps the construct of aggression by including traditional and contemporary indicators to determine whether aggression is truly gendered.
A Gender-Sensitive Perspective on Risk and Resilience
Gender-Specific Risk Factors and Developmental Trajectories
As more research is devoted to the topic of female aggression, a key question is whether female-specific theories of aggressive and violent behavior are required. To date there is no comprehensive theory of the development of antisocial or aggressive behavior that is specific to females. Many studies using normative samples show that the majority of the known risk factors for aggression in boys, such as parental criminality, family conflict/violence, physical maltreatment, sensation seeking, low IQ, and poor self-esteem, also increase risk for girls. However, some studies comparing risk and normative samples, and studies focused only on high-risk samples, suggest that certain risk factors have a greater effect on risk in girls. For example, some research has shown that girls who experience physical abuse and family breakdown are at much higher risk for aggression than girls not exposed to these risks. Yet some studies have shown that these risk factors are unrelated to violence in boys. Other research has suggested that cumulative social risk factors differentiate early versus later onset of aggression problems in girls, while biological factors differentiate early versus later onset aggression in boys.
Such findings have given rise to a new perspective on the problem of aggression in girls, one that focuses on the importance of relational contexts in female development and adjustment. Moretti, Obsuth, Odgers, and Penney’s findings concur with this view, showing that girls at high risk for aggression are more likely than boys to have a history of early removal from their biological parents; more frequent care outside their parental home; and greater likelihood of being relinquished by their parents to government care. Although very high rates of maltreatment of both girls and boys have been found, girls report higher rates of physical maltreatment by their mothers and higher rates of sexual abuse than do boys.
The fact that similar findings have emerged across both normative and high-risk samples suggests that these results are not merely artifacts of extreme populations and may bear relevance to understanding girls’ development and aggression more generally. This research was recently summarized by Miriam Ehrensaft, who concluded that (a) disrupted relationships are more likely to give rise to aggression and antisocial behavior in girls than boys, (b) aggression is more likely to be expressed within close relationships by girls than boys, and (c) the long-term impact of aggression on development is more likely to extend to relationship domains for girls than boys. Longitudinal research is required with samples of girls at high risk, to understand fully the links among relational contexts, risk and developmental pathways, and consequences of aggressive behavior.
Protective Factors
Relational factors (e.g., positive family, peer, and romantic partner relationships) and social supports appear to be important in reducing vulnerability to risk for aggressive behavior, and perhaps particularly so for girls. The protective benefit of positive social relationships may extend outside the family. For example, research shows that having a boyfriend who is at least moderately prosocial during adolescence can be a protective factor for highly aggressive and antisocial girls. More research is needed to identify key protective factors, particularly those that buffer girls growing up in adverse environments—as is the typical case for girls within high-risk clinical and forensic samples.
Developmental Trajectories
Findings are mixed on whether developmental trajectories are comparable for girls and boys. Terrie Moffitt and colleagues have argued that the distinction between early onset life-course persistent and adolescent time-limited trajectories applies similarly to girls and boys. Others have questioned the applicability of this distinction to females because aggressive and antisocial behavior in girls more often emerges in adolescence and carries the same poor prognosis as early onset aggression and antisocial behavior in boys.
Developmental Consequences
Even with the onset of aggressive behavior delayed until adolescence, girls involved in aggression are more likely to leave school early, achieve limited occupational success, and rely on social assistance to support themselves and their children. If they become romantically involved with older delinquent boys, they are particularly at risk for poor adjustment. As they transition to adulthood, girls involved in aggressive and antisocial behavior are likely to experience a wide range of psychiatric and social adjustment problems, including early sexual involvement and pregnancy and higher rates of divorce and child custody loss.
The physical health costs associated with antisocial behavior are just beginning to be realized. There is reason to believe that the interplay between mental and physical health may be particularly critical for females. While normative samples are providing insights into the relationships between developmental trajectories of antisocial behavior and mental and physical health outcomes, virtually nothing is known about this relationship among adolescent girls and young women at the highest level of risk.
Cultural and Social Marginalization
A disproportionate number of non-Caucasian girls from impoverished backgrounds are incarcerated: African American girls in the United States and Aboriginal girls in Canada are unquestionably overrepresented in the juvenile justice system. Research on social and cultural marginalization of ethno cultural minority girls and problems of aggressive and antisocial behavior is extremely limited. Understanding how protective factors influence adjustment is critical, especially with regard to girls of minority status who also frequently grow up in impoverished inner-city neighborhoods.
Future Research
Why study the causes, concomitants, and consequences of aggressive and antisocial behavior in girls? Beyond the opportunity to generate new knowledge to enhance the social, physical, and mental well-being of girls, the potential for cost-saving is extraordinarily high. The presence of severe behavioral problems in conjunction with other mental health problems, such as depression, substantially inflates health service costs, totaling as much as $13,000 per child for outpatient services in a 6-month period. Beyond mental health costs, forensic services for youth with serious aggressive and antisocial behavior consume substantial public funds. A recent estimate in the United Kingdom puts the cost of incarceration at £4,645 (US$ 9,145) per month. These estimates do not include other social costs incurred by victims, or projected lifetime costs that result from lower educational achievement, poor vocational adjustment, and early parenthood. Importantly, these estimates fail to include the costs of increased risk in children of mothers with a history of severe behavior problems. The lack of knowledge and the high cost of health and forensic services associated with serious aggressive and antisocial behavior calls for an investment in research on aggressive and antisocial behavior in girls.
Bibliography:
- Ehrensaft, M. K. (2005). Interpersonal relationships and sex differences in the development of conduct problems. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 8(1), 39–63.
- Kim-Cohen, J., Moffitt, T. E., & Caspi, A. (2004). Genetic and environmental processes in young children’s resilience and vulnerability to socioeconomic deprivation. Child Development, 75(3), 651–668.
- Moffitt, T., Caspi, A., & Rutter, M., & Silva, P. (2001). Sex differences in antisocial behavior: Conduct disorder, delinquency, and violence in the Dunedin longitudinal study. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Moretti, M. M., Obsuth, I., Odgers, C., & Reebye, P. (2006). Exposure to maternal versus paternal partner violence, PTSD, and aggression in adolescent girls and boys. Aggressive Behavior, 32(4), 385–395.
- Moretti, M. M., Odgers, C., & Jackson, M. (2004). Girls and aggression: Contributing factors and intervention principles. New York: Kluwer-Plenum.
- Pepler, D., Madsen, K. C., & Webster, C. (2005). The development and treatment of girlhood aggression. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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