“I didn’t raise a d#@k!” How parents perceive and address gendered bullying with children

ABSTRACT

This is an exploratory study that uses a critical feminist approach to examine how parents perceive and respond to gendered bullying with children. Past research conceptualizes bullying from a feminist perspective and previous studies examine how parents perceive bullying. This study moves beyond earlier investigations by integrating these sites of inquiry. The author engages five fathers and eight mothers to participate in this study (n = 13). Data collection includes semi-structured individual interviews and the data analysis is based on a critical feminist approach to phenomenological inquiry. The data analysis shows how the majority of parents, in this study, do perceive and address bullying from a critical feminist perspective, in particular, according to three categories: (a) challenging binary thinking b) understanding identities/positionalities and c) perceiving/addressing gendered power relations. The results lay the foundation for practice and policy implications aimed at bullying prevention and future research to further examine social phenomenon related to gendered bullying.

KEYWORDS:

• Bullying
• gender
• feminism
• qualitative
• parenting
• phenomenology

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the feedback and support she received from Dr. Alexis Arczynski, the University of Utah and Dr. Stephanie Hoover, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Notes

1. (M = Male); (F = Female).

2. (Mo = Months).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Idaho State University Humanities and Social Science Research Committee Seed Grant for Junior Faculty.