Bullying is considered a severe social issue among youth worldwide. According to the national initiative Stop Bullying (2021b), Bullying can be defined as “unwanted, aggressive behavior among school-aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance” (para. 1). Bullying can manifest in a variety of ways, including physical abuse, verbal assaults, threats, spreading misinformation, and leaving the victim out of the group, and make them feel marginalized and unwanted. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2017) report, nearly 20% of the youth population aged 12-18 reported being victims of Bullying in the preceding twelve months (p. 6). The severity of the issue concerns the fact that bullying behaviors do not exclusively affect the victims, causing some irrational behavior in bullies and bystanders as well. Thus, according to Stop Bullying (2021a), the victims of Bullying develop the risks of psychological traumas, health issues, and a decrease in academic performance, whereas bullies and bystanders are at risk of early engagement in self-destructive behavior such as drinking, using illicit drugs, various misdemeanors, and mental health issues.
When speaking of the correlation between Bullying and poverty, the national statistics do not reveal supportive data. The National Center for Education Statistics (2017) claims physical appearance and gender to be more significant precursors of Bullying. However, various studies conducted worldwide demonstrate the interrelation between socioeconomic adversities and victimization. The most important factor in the context is the fact that bullying behaviors embraced by children with socioeconomic issues include both bullying and being bullied.
For the past years, scholars found interest in defining what type of bullying behavior was more popular with children coming from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Thus, for example, the study by Knaappila et al. (2018) demonstrates that children with socioeconomic adversities are significantly more likely to become engaged in corresponding behaviors. Similar findings were presented by Pervanidou et al. (2019), claiming a low socioeconomic status contributes to children’s victimization by peers. The overall family background is also a significant variable in victimization. As demonstrated in research by Schmiedeberg and Schumann (2019) and Jiang (2020), poverty should not be directly considered as a cause of complicated child development. Instead, poverty should be seen as a trigger for mediating peer victimization, which leads to mental health problems and poor outcomes in adulthood. Hence, it may be concluded that the severe issue of Bullying triggered by poverty in children’s families has a drastic impact on child development and social adaptation in the long term.
In order to understand the specifics of child development, it is necessary to address the extent to which the environment impacts one’s perception of self and reality. The most efficient theoretical framework, in this case, would be the theory of bioecological systems presented by Bronfenbrenner (Hayes et al., 2017). According to this concept, a child’s cognitive and emotional development is predetermined by the interaction of different ecosystems, namely, microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. In other words, children’s cognition develops through direct interaction with family, peers, educational establishments, and wider society. In this scenario, poverty within the family acquires various considerations from state legislation, social perception, peer pressure, and the family’s struggle to combine proper childcare and labor.
Order this paper