I Get It from My Mama! Exploring Childhood Parenting Styles and the Development of Proactive and Reactive Aggression in African American Women

An abundance of studies have addressed parenting styles and psychosocial outcomes (Dornbusch et al.,1987; Lamborn et al., 1991; Zalewski et al., 2013). Yet, most of these studies focused on children and adolescents. Furthermore, middle class youth and adolescents have been used as the standard in which other groups are compared to for many studies (McKenry et al.,1989). Baumrind's parenting typologies have not been well studied in populations other than those that make up U.S. cultural majority (Lin & Fu, 1990). As a result, the applicability and utility of Baumrind's parenting typology regarding minority populations have been questioned. In addition to limited parenting-type research that focused on African American populations, parenting-type research and adult aggression has also been limited. This type of research has further been limited to mostly aggressive behaviors in males ignoring aggression in females. The primary goal of this study was to examine the relationship between Baumrind's parenting styles (i.e., permissive, authoritarian, and authoritative) experienced during childhood and the development of proactive and reactive aggression among African American women during adulthood. The results of the study indicated that permissive parenting during childhood was associated with proactive aggression in adulthood. However, adverse childhood experiences and race did not have a moderating effect on the relationship between permissive parenting and proactive aggression. There were no significant associations between parenting styles and reactive aggression. Keywords: parenting styles, African American, aggression