Abstract
Aggression is part of South African society and has implications for the mental
health of persons living in South Africa. If parents are aggressive adolescents are
also likely to be aggressive and that will impact negatively on their mental health.
In this article the nature and extent of adolescents’ experiences of aggression and
aggressive behaviour in the family are investigated. A deductive explorative quantitative
approach was followed. Aggression is reasoned to be dependent on aspects
such as self-concept, moral reasoning, communication, frustration tolerance and
family relationships. To analyse the data from questionnaires of 101 families (95
adolescents, 95 mothers and 91 fathers) Cronbach Alpha, various consecutive first
and second order factor analyses, correlations, multiple regression, MANOVA,
ANOVA and Scheffè/ Dunnett tests were used. It was found that aggression correlated
negatively with the independent variables; and the correlations between
adolescents and their parents were significant. Regression analyses indicated that
different predictors predicted aggression. Furthermore, differences between adolescents and their parents indicated that the experienced levels of aggression between adolescents and their parents were small. Implications for education are given.