Parental Perspectives About What It Means to Bully

Abstract

While most bullying researchers argue that any definition of bullying must include three core elements (power imbalance, intent to cause harm, and repetitive negative actions), relatively few researchers have examined whether parents define bullying along these three elements. Among those that have, most find that parents focus on the intent to cause harm and ignore or discount the power imbalance and repetition elements. Using qualitative data from 50 parents in a southeastern state, we explore parental definitions of bullying and trace how their definitions match those three elements. We find that most parents include intent to cause harm in their definition but far fewer mention the power imbalance or repetition commonly found in scholarly definitions. Additionally, we uncover a fourth component that was important for several parents: the fact that bullies engage in that activity to build their own self-esteem. Implications for policy and research are discussed.