This study describes a test of the Fathers and Sons Program for increasing intentions to avoid violence and reducing aggressive behaviors in 8-to 12-year-old African American boys by enhancing the parenting skills satisfaction and parenting behaviors of their nonresident fathers. The study included 158 intervention and 129 comparison group…

Using nationally representative samples of 45,964 two- to nine-year-old children and their primary caregivers in 17 developing countries, this study examined the relations between children's cognitive, language, sensory, and motor disabilities and caregivers' use of discipline and violence. Primary caregivers reported on their…

The present study examined the prevalence and country-level correlates of 11 responses to children's behavior, including nonviolent discipline, psychological aggression, and physical violence, as well as endorsement of the use of physical punishment, in 24 countries using data from 30,470 families with 2- to 4-year-old children that participated…

Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological model proposes that events in higher order social ecosystems should influence human development through their impact on events in lower order social ecosystems. This proposition was tested with respect to ecological violence and the development of children's aggression via analyses of 3 waves of data (1 wave…

Stability and change of moral disengagement were examined in a sample of 366 adolescents from ages 14 to 20 years. Four developmental trajectories were identified: (a) nondisengaged group that started with initially low levels followed by an important decline, (b) normative group that started with initially moderate levels followed by a decline,…

Compared 64 inner-city Los Angeles preschoolers' spontaneous story narratives, recorded immediately after the 1992 riots, with narratives told by a matched comparison group of 128 preschoolers living in other cities. Found that children with direct exposure to the riots told more narratives with aggressive thematic content than did the comparison…

Compares patterns of play and serious aggression in three- to eight-year-old children of two neighboring Zapotec Indian communities that have different levels of adult violence. Results suggest that community differences in violence levels are perpetuated as Zapotec children learn community-appropriate patterns to express aggression and continue…

This study tested the hypothesis that aggressive children attach more value to rewarding outcomes of aggression and less to negative outcomes than do nonaggressive children. Sex differences in outcome values were also examined. (PCB)

Reviews the findings of the eight studies in this special section on children and ethnic/political violence, focusing on the contributions and limitations of research in this area and suggestions for future research. (MDM)