Aggressiviness in boys and girls: evaluations made by mothers.

Aggressiveness can be defined as any form of behavior intended to hurt a living being. It can be characterized as direct aggression, more common in boys' behavior, and hostile aggression, more often practiced by girls. Objective: to describe and compare the frequency of direct aggressive behavior in children, considering: gender, age, family economic class and parenting styles. Method: 47 mothers of boys and girls were investigated, who responded to the Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 6-18, the Parenting Style Inventory and to the Brazilian Economic Classification Criteria. Results: no differences were found in the manifestation of aggressiveness in the studied variables and a weak negative correlation was found between parenting style and aggressiveness. Conclusions: to understand the development and maintenance of aggressive behaviors in childhood, interactions between environmental, biological, social, cultural, family and historical factors should be considered. The role of father figure, not assessed in this study, during development, is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]