Parenting Styles and Bullying: The Mediating Role of Parental Psychological Aggression and Physical Punishment

The aim of this research was to determine the mediating role of punitive parental discipline (psychological aggression and physical punishment) between the dimensions of parents' parenting styles and their children's involvement in bullying victimization. The study had a correlational design. The statistical population of the study comprised all male and female students attending public junior high schools in Astaneh-ye Ashrafiyeh in school year 2016-17 from among whom 295 students (150 girls and 145 boys) were selected through random cluster sampling method. The instruments included Parenting Styles Questionnaire (Oliva et al., 2007), Discipline Dimensions Inventory (Straus & Fauchier, 2007), and European Bullying Intervention Project Questionnaire (Brighi et al., 2012). Structural equation modeling was performed to analyze the data. The results demonstrated that parental psychological aggression and physical punishment played a mediating indirect role in the link between parenting styles and adolescents’ bullying victimization. Findings also indicated that paternal and maternal parenting styles could predict adolescents' bullying involvement, while punitive parental discipline mediated this association. Furthermore, the results confirmed the mediating role of parental discipline between the parenting practices analyzed and students' victimization.  In fact, parental psychological aggression and physical punishment increase the risk of adolescents' bullying involvement. Therefore, intervention programs must involve parents to make them aware about the important role they play in this process and to improve their parenting styles.