| While it is not surprising to see aggression problems in children who are growing up in violent homes or in children who approve of aggression, it is more of a puzzle to see children with these family and individual characteristics develop without such behavioral problems. My dissertation explored this resilience phenomenon by studying children who came from violent homes or who have violent beliefs, but who did not become aggressive, by asking three specific questions: (1) whether children's social-cognitive orientation (i.e., beliefs disapproving of aggression) acts as a buffer against childhood aggression usually associated with dysfunctional and violent homes, (2) reciprocally, whether cohesive, supportive, and non-aggressive families act as a buffer against childhood aggression usually associated with violence-endorsing beliefs, and (3) whether either social-cognitive or family protective factors can help alleviate aggression problems that were already exhibited in some children. These questions were explored in a community-representative sample of children and their mothers over a 5-year time span by utilizing and testing three known theoretical models of psychological resilience. The results from all three tested theoretical models of resilience converged, strongly demonstrating the compensatory influences of both children's non-aggressive beliefs (against dysfunctional families) and cohesive and supportive families (against children's aggressive beliefs) in reducing aggression problems usually associated with these individual and family-level developmental risks. In addition, children who showed improvement in their aggression problems over time also showed increases in optimal cognitive and family functioning, demonstrating the compensatory effects of these positive influences. In middle childhood, it appears that the processes of resilience were operating at approximately equal levels, regardless of whether the developmental risks were in the cognitive or the family domain, and whether the protective factors were in the cognitive or the family domain. In either combination, they were successfully buffering the negative effects of family and cognitive risks, and keeping children within the behaviorally normative range. |
