Family Background of Child Involvement in School Bullying: Impact of Psychological and Social Characteristics of the Family

The paper defines aggression and bullying and draws a distinction between them basing on the parameters of repetition and imbalance of power. We evaluate the occurrence of both phenomena in Russia and abroad basing on recent studies and analyse how family factors can affect whether the child will be involved in bullying or not and in which position: we describe the influence of structural, functional and communicative characteristics of the family system (close/distant relationships between the family members, preferred communicative style, marital conflict, relationship with siblings, etc.) and the features of parent-child interaction. Also, we analyse the contribution of certain social factors, such as the level of family income, parental education level etc. The influence of different psychological and social characteristics of the family on the risk of the child’s victimization in school bullying is estimated for each age group (from primary schoolchildren to high school students).