Abstract
There is consensus amongst scholars of childhood bullying that far from being a harmless ‘rite of passage’, which children brush off easily as they grow up, bullying can cast a long shadow over their lives. However, conflicting findings have been reached about whether poverty predicts bullying involvement. There is also a lack of qualitative research into poor children’s perspectives on bullying, which could shed a light on the mechanisms through which bullying influences children’s quality of life. Analysis of the Understanding Childhoods qualitative longitudinal study of childhood poverty demonstrated that poverty was an explicit factor in only a handful of bullying incidents, but it often seemed to play a subtle role by placing strain on children’s relationships. This led to the hypothesis of socioeconomic circumstances moderating the effect of bullying on SWB. The qualitative analysis also indicated that bullying may be more harmful for older children, girls and non-White ethnicities, and that support from family and friends may be protective. These hypotheses were tested in quantitative analysis of Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS). There were clear associations between bullying involvement and SWB, most notably for being bulllied ‘in other ways’ (i.e. non-physically). Household income and a child-reported measure of pocket money and savings had a direct effect on the likelihood of being bullied and an indirect effect on SWB via being bullied. There were no significant interactions with socioeconomic circumstances, gender, age and ethnicity, but family and peer support were found to moderate the relationship between bullying and SWB.
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Notes
- 1.
There are slightly different rules about when children start school in the four nations of the UK.
- 2.
It is important to highlight that the Understanding Childhoods study was not designed specifically for the purpose of investigating the phenomenon of bullying. Although bullying was discussed in at least one of the waves of data collection, it was one of many topics that were covered, thus, direct discussions of bullying constitute a minority of the total time spent talking to children. It is also important to highlight that the sample is entirely composed of children from low-income households, thus direct comparisons with non-poor children are not usually possible, and it is sometimes hard to determine whether children in more advantaged economic circumstances would have similar or different experiences.
- 3.
It should be noted that since the quantitative analysis is cross-sectional, there is no temporal ordering of variables and the direction of causality from socioeconomic circumstances to bullying to SWB is assumed.
- 4.
Income poverty is defined as an equivalised household income that is lower than 60% of the median.
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Pople, L. (2022). What Stops a Good Life for Children? An Exploration of Bullying, Poverty and Gender. In: Tiliouine, H., Benatuil, D., Lau, M.K.W. (eds) Handbook of Children’s Risk, Vulnerability and Quality of Life. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01783-4_14
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