Bullying remains a common part of childhood and adolescence, yet its roots often extend beyond the schoolyard. While parents and teachers frequently focus on peer dynamics, new research suggests that family stress and the surrounding community also play a critical role in shaping whether children become bullies, victims, or both.
A study by Qianyu Zhou, Chaohui Lin, and Xiang Guo, published in Frontiers in Psychology (2025), analyzed national survey data to explore how family dysfunction and parenting stress influence children’s involvement in bullying, and whether neighborhood support can soften these effects.
The researchers found that children from more dysfunctional families were significantly more likely to be involved in bullying, either as perpetrators or victims. However, the study also showed that supportive neighborhoods could weaken this harmful pathway, highlighting the importance of community ties in children’s well-being.
Family dysfunction, such as conflict, parental mental health problems, or substance use, has long been recognized as a risk factor for children’s emotional and behavioral difficulties.
In such environments, parents often experience heightened stress and frustration, which can erode the quality of their parenting.
This stress may reduce warmth and consistency, increase irritability, and ultimately affect children’s mental health. These struggles, in turn, can raise the likelihood of bullying involvement, either by making children more aggressive or by leaving them more vulnerable to victimization.
To examine this process, Zhou and colleagues used data from the U.S. National Survey of Children’s Health, collected between 2020 and 2023. Their analysis included over 114,000 children aged 6 to 17.
Parents provided information about family circumstances, their own stress levels, their child’s mental health, the level of neighborhood support, and whether their child had been involved in bullying during the past year, either as aggressor or target.
The findings revealed a clear chain of effects.
Family dysfunction predicted higher parenting stress, which in turn was linked to poorer child mental health. Children with greater mental health difficulties were then more likely to be involved in bullying.
This sequential pathway suggests that family stress spills over into the parent–child relationship, undermines children’s psychological resilience, and eventually shows up in peer interactions.
Crucially, the study found that neighborhood support moderated this chain reaction.
In communities where parents reported strong cohesion and mutual trust among neighbors, the negative impact of parenting stress on children’s mental health was weaker.
As a result, the pathway from family dysfunction to bullying was less pronounced. Conversely, in neighborhoods with little support, children bore the full brunt of family stress, making them more vulnerable to bullying involvement.
This pattern reflects Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, which emphasizes how children’s development is shaped not only by family life but also by the wider community context.
For the general public, these findings underline how interconnected family and community life are in shaping children’s social outcomes.
Bullying is often treated as an individual or school problem, but this study suggests that interventions must also address the broader contexts in which children grow up.
Programs that support parents under stress, improve children’s mental health, and foster stronger neighborhood ties may collectively reduce the risk of bullying.
This research also highlights the potential of community-based approaches.
Initiatives that build trust among neighbors, create safe spaces for children, and encourage mutual support may act as buffers against the effects of family dysfunction.
For parents who feel overwhelmed, even small acts of support from neighbors—such as looking out for one another’s children—can make a measurable difference in family stress and children’s well-being.
The study is not without limitations. Because it relied on cross-sectional survey data, the findings cannot prove causation.
It is possible, for example, that children’s bullying involvement contributes to family stress, rather than the other way around. The measures were also based on parent reports, which may understate bullying experiences.
Future research would benefit from longitudinal studies and multiple sources of information, including teachers and peers.
Even with these caveats, the results offer a valuable perspective on the broader social ecology of bullying.
They suggest that tackling the problem effectively requires a multi-level approach: reducing family dysfunction, supporting parents, addressing children’s mental health, and strengthening community ties.
Ultimately, bullying is not just a matter of individual behavior but a reflection of the environments in which children live and grow.
By fostering healthier families and more supportive neighborhoods, society can help protect children from the cascading effects of stress that too often end in peer aggression.
Citation
Zhou, Q., Lin, C., & Guo, X. (2025). Family dysfunction, parenting stress, and child mental health: Associations with bullying involvement and the moderating role of neighborhood support. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1644696. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1644696
