Substance abuse, parenting styles, and aggression: An exploratory study of weapon-carrying students.

Abstract This study represents one of the first undertaken exclusively with students who brought weapons (other than guns) to school, a group often presenting special difficulty to educators, social workers, and others. The study was performed ancillary to a national study of school violence prevention programs, undertaken by the Hamilton Fish National Institute, but completed at the only site exclusively working with weapons carriers. Appended to the instrument developed for the national study (the National School Crime and Safety Survey), were questions examining measures of student and family relationships, as well as attitudes and behavior among students who had been caught with weapons in school. Subjects (N=37) were students of the Syracuse Public Schools, who had been sent to an alternative school as a result of being caught with a weapon. Substance abusing behavior by adults in the home was common and over one-quarter of respondents indicated having a parent who had been in jail. Family structure was mainly female-headed and family relationships were not reported as overly conflictual. Physical punishment was not common and most respondents reported a good relationship with their parents. Families may be better characterized as inadequate and providing poor models than violent. Family factors most strongly associated with non-aggressive strategies are those which suggest accountability or limit-setting by parents. High levels of parental alcohol and drug abuse, as well as the students' own use, suggest links to poor parenting and intergenerational processes. Findings support the need for substance abuse assessments and family interventions that strengthen disciplinary and protective functions. Introduction Often the setting where a problem is presented and studied influences how that problem is defined and where answers are sought. Weapon carrying in schools is one such problem. Since such potentially violent behaviors occur in, and are defined within the educational environment, specific characteristics and skills of students (e.g., anger management and conflict resolution skills) are often emphasized. The popular strategy for students who carry weapons to school is expulsion, despite critics such as Alexander and Curtis (1995) arguing that this strategy can be counterproductive. Although educators, social workers and others have sought to gain a broader understanding of the factors that are related to students' aggressive behaviors and attitudes, the mechanism of parental influence on children's weapon carrying in school is poorly understood. We need to better understand what motivates children to bring weapons to school, what the links to substance abuse may be, and what influence their family exerts on this behavior. Teachers' attributions of parental influence are often overly general and sometimes judgmental. Shepard and Rose (1994) found many teachers hold negative and mistrustful attitudes toward the parenting practices of their students' parents. Smith (1990) showed that teachers tended to blame the families of their students for failing to provide stimulation, skills, and resources essential to success in school. The 1993 Metropolitan Life Survey of teachers, found that most teachers felt that lack of parental supervision at home (71%) and lack of family involvement with the school (66%) were primary factors contributing to student violence. According to Kimweli (1997) parents themselves identify a lack of parental involvement as partly to blame for school violence. Too often, though, studies of students' violence and aggression in school fail to examine the specific dynamics of parental influence and substance abuse that may be associated with these behaviors. Despite calls for action such as are made regularly by the National Education Association for schools to place safety high on their agendas, and involve parents and citizens, we still do not have an adequate understanding of the ways parents can and do impact school safety (Geiger, 1996). …

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