President Obama is hosting a conference on bullying prevention this week, a subject, coincidentally, I had already planned to write about. Several recent articles on the subject prompted my attention to this important topic. One, from researchers at the University of California at Davis, posits that most bullying happens among relatively close peers. While the stereotypical bullying of the outcast definitely happens, the researchers found that the dominant pattern is quite different.
Sociologists Robert Faris and Diane Felme studied 3,722 6th through 12th graders from three North Carolina counties over three and a half years. Using self-reported information about their friendships and any aggressive behavior they reported experiencing or perpetrating themselves, the researchers mapped and analyzed the data to determine the relationship between friendship and aggressive behavior. They define aggression as “behavior directed toward harming or causing pain to another,” including hitting, shoving and kicking; name-calling and threats; and meanness that takes place “outside of a victim’s immediate purview such as spreading rumors and ostracism.”[i] They conclude that approximately a third of the students were involved with aggressive behavior.[ii]
Working from the assumption that adolescents value social status, Professors Faris and Felme discovered that young people engage in aggressive behavior as they jockey for social position. Most teenage aggression is directed at social rivals — “maybe one rung ahead of you or right beneath you,” as Faris put it, “rather than the kid who is completely unprotected and isolated.” Faris goes on to say, “the overall rate of aggression seems to increase as status goes up. What it suggests is that a student thinks they get more benefit to going after somebody who is a rival”; in other words, the higher the stakes, the more intense the aggression. Indeed, only those at the very bottom or the peak of the social ladder – the top 98% -- and those who genuinely don’t care about social status, don’t participate in aggressive behavior, either as agents or victims. “Most victimization is occurring in the middle to upper ranges of status,” explains Faris.[iii]
Faris and Felme’s sophisticated mapping of the relationships among the individuals engaged in aggressive behavior focuses on groups rather than individuals and illuminates patterns that psychologists, preoccupied with individual experiences and traits, might not observe. In addition, the sociologists have identified less obvious phenomena than the sensational cases that psychologists study. What Faris and Felme have uncovered may well be “invisible” as Faris says. That does not, however, make it any less significant for those enmeshed in fierce social competition on a daily basis. In that context, “It’s entirely possible that one act, one rumor spread on the Internet could be devastating.” We certainly know that!
I would say that this study, while interesting, just proves what we already know. With girls, we usually refer to this kind of behavior as “mean girls” and we call the perpetrators are Queen Bees and their associates. The point for us is, what do we do about it? How do we help our girls to extricate themselves from this cycle of aggression – which, by the way, demonstrates very little difference between boys and girls? Plus, we need to address the behavior of both the aggressors and the victims, while recognizing that it’s very likely that girls will play both roles at different times.
First, we need to remember that much of this behavior is invisible. Rosalind Wiseman, the author of Queen Bees & Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, & Other Realities of Adolescence, the basis for the movie Mean Girls, argues that girls skillfully operate under the adult radar. In fact, some of the worst offenders are girls who present themselves positively to adults, a fact that provides a very effective cover for their cruel treatment of their peers. So we must be careful not to be duped.
We also need to consider the messages we send our daughters, consciously or unconsciously. What does she absorb about our values regarding friendship about how people should treat one another? What do we communicate about our own feelings regarding social status? What is our role in our daughter’s social life? Julie Rodriguez-Franson, our Lower School Counselor, warns that a mother often labels a girl a bully when she herself does not get along with the other mother. “In fifth and sixth grades,” Rodriguez-Franson explains, “the girls become very aware of adult interactions as well. They often talk about parents who can bully each other or intimidate another student when the mothers don’t get along.”
While Rosalind Wiseman’s work is now nine years old, her understanding of “girl world” and her advice for handling the social challenges inherent in that world knows no peer. She aims to help parents raise self-confident young women, a goal that can be achieved in part through effective negotiation of the perils of “girl world.” To this end, she offers a wealth of advice, for the parents of both the aggressors and the victims.
First, we should spend some time with our daughters helping them to articulate what they want and should expect in a friendship. It’s helpful to draw up a list that answers questions such as
· What does she want and need in a friendship? (trust, reliability, loyalty, telling you when they’re angry with you in a respectful way)
· What are her rights in a friendship? (To be treated respectfully, with kindness and honesty)
· What are her responsibilities in a friendship (To treat her friends ethically)
· What would a friend hav to do or be like for her to ende the friendship? (Not listen to her, not honor her values and ethics)
· Under what circumstances would she go to an adult for help with a problem with a friend? (When the problem feels too big to handle alone)
· What are her friends’ rights and responsibilities in the friendship? (To listen even when it’s not easy to hear)[iv]
In both our Lower and Middle Schools guidance curricula, our girls to consider these very questions, so they have a basis for this kind of conversation with you. The process of working through these questions provides an excellent forum for reinforcing the values that you have presumably been teaching your daughter since she snatched a shovel from someone else in the sandbox. It’s also important, if possible to have this conversation early, during a period of social calm (preferably well before Middle School) and then to revisit it periodically (say before school starts each year. A set of expectations to refer to when she encounters difficult social situations (which virtually every girl will) will provide a foundation from which to work.
Next week, we’ll talk about how to handle the actual meanness, whether your daughter is the perpetrator, the victim or the bystander.
[i] Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee, “Status Struggles: Network Centrality and Gender Segregation in Same- and Cross-Gender Aggression,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 76, No. 1, February 2011, 49.
[ii] Tara Parker-Pope, “Web of Popularity, Achieved by Bullying,” The New York Times, February 14, 2011.
[iii] Parker-Pope, “Web of Popularity, Achieved by Bullying”
[iv] Rosalind Wiseman, Queen Bees & Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends & Other Realities of Adolescence (New York, 2002), 173.
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