Aggressive behavior in normal and deviant members of intact versus mother-only families.
Single-parent families have been identified as using more coercion and aggression to elicit compliance than intact families. The present study compared 9 mother-only and 15 intact families from a referred clinical sample to 9 mother-only and 16 intact nonreferred "normal" families using a family behavioral observation code. Clinical families emitted higher rates of aggressive behavior than normals, and mother-only emitted higher rates than intact. However, mother-only normals had lower rates than intact clinical families. The intact versus mother-only factor appears to be less important in understanding aggression than do the specific interactional patterns of family members.
D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003068:Coercion; D004243:Divorce; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D012801:Sibling Relations