Girls who have bullied others by age 8 are more likely to have a child when they are teenagers

Question

Question: Is there any association between bullying behaviour at age 8 and becoming a teenage mother?

People: 2507 female participants of the Finnish 1981 Birth Cohort Study. The original sample included all children born in Finland in 1981 (n=60 007); a 10% sample was selected, and, of these, 5813 (96.6%) participated in baseline data collection in 1989, of which 2867 were female. Information on childhood bullying and births under the age of 20 years was available for 2507 females (87.4%).

Setting: Multicentre child psychiatric study, Finland; register based follow-up data were available for participants until the end of 2001.

Risk factors: Childhood bullying behaviour or being a victim of childhood bullying, as self-reported by the child, parents and teachers. Children were asked how often they bullied others, or were themselves a victim of bullying (1, not usually; 2, sometimes; 3, nearly every day). Parents and teachers were…