Girls, More Than Boys, Seek Vengeance

Among children aged 8 through 14 injured in fights, girls are more likely than boys to get into a brawl in retaliation for previous grievances, new research reports.

Investigators found that violent events involving girls were more than six times as likely as boy-only encounters to be a "recurrence of a previous fight."

Although the reasons for this difference remain unclear, girls at this age may simply be more "skilled" at planning violent events in response to an ongoing issue.

"In contrast, young boys may react more 'in the moment,"' noted Dr. Cynthia J. Mollen of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

In 2001 alone, more than 2,000 children between the ages of 5 and 19 were killed as a result of a violent encounter with a peer. Although fighting tends to occur more often in boys, a recent survey found that nearly one-quarter of high school girls say they were in at least one physical fight during the previous year.

To investigate the most common reasons why young girls and boys engage in violent encounters, Mollen and her colleagues surveyed 190 children between the ages of 8 and 14 who were being treated at an urban emergency department for injuries caused by violence.

Around two-thirds of the encounters were called fights, meaning both participants were actively involved, according to the team's report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. In most of the other encounters, one person was injured unexpectedly and did not fight back, which was considered an assault.

Girls were reportedly involved in nearly 4 out of 10 of the violent events. Most occurred on a weekday, and around half took place at school. Three-quarters of the encounters involved someone the patient knew.

Popular reasons for the argument involved "being disrespected," or "teasing." However, events that involved girls were much more likely to stem from past grievances, the authors report. Other reasons kids gave for fighting included boredom, overdoing roughhousing, peer pressure and jealousy.

These findings suggest that preventing violence among girls may often involve "teaching girls how to deal with a conflict when it first arises, rather than letting it build up over time," Mollen suggested.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, June 2004.

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