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Is bullying a “public health problem”? (the CDC appears to think so) Is it a legal issue (for which bullies—and/or parents of bullies—can be held liable)? Or perhaps, is it simply the most recent manifestation of victimization to emerge from a litigious culture.
No small part of how we move forward to address bullying hinges on how we define root causes and where responsibility lies, as they determine how we will set about addressing it.
By and large, bullying has been positioned as a psychological issue. Most commonly, we have been told that bullies were themselves victims. This makes bullying a mental health issue. So, too, does defining bullies as narcissists (or even sociopaths) looking to assert their superiority.
Despite this psychological slant, we routinely attempt to curtail bullying through school disciplinary codes that prohibit “bulling behaviors,” punishing its most obvious and egregious manifestations. Why not take this one step further, and create public ordinances or fines punishing the parents of repeat offenders? This is precisely what Dan Ault, Chief of Police in Plover, Wisconsin, has done.
Ault authored an ordinance (approved by the village board) that will fine the parents of repeat offenders of bullying. The municipal code violation works something like this: parents are notified, in writing, that their child has been involved in a ‘bullying incident.’ If the child is involved in another incident within 90 days, the parents get a $124.00 fine. Ault’s logic in this is simple: The police must be involved in order for a fine to be issued, and fines apparently need to be issued in order to make parents take responsibility for their children’s behavior. Ault harkens back to the time when parents were liable for what their kids broke, and looks to harness that responsibility and drag it into the 21st century.
While this logic may be straightforward, its applications seems a bit less clear. How does Plover, Wisconsin define bullying? How do they ‘prove’ the child has behaved in an aggressive way? Must claims be substantiated beyond ‘he said / she said,’ (and include, for example, screen shots or video evidence?) Can the accused contest the claim? By what means can parents "require" (demand, force) different behaviors from their children?
Plover appears to be turning school disciplinary codes into village law, something that may be feasible in a town with a (relatively homogenous) population under 13,000 (smaller than some New York City schools). The idea to fine parents is not new—and in fact fining parents of bullies was enacted, in 2013, in another Wisconsin town (although a similar ordinance was defeated in Carson, California a year later). Yet Plover’s action might test the legality of ordinances that hold parents responsible for the actions of their children (especially when no tangible effect, such as a broken window or stolen property, can be pointed to and determine reparation).
As village and city ordinances propel discussions of bullying forward, we must be clear about the implications of setting a course that further institutionalizes victimization (which in itself may be a troublesome mindset). Once anti-bullying initiatives come to be predicated on clearly defined ‘wrong’ behaviors, we become blinded to nuances—tone of voice, timing, whom is ‘told’ what, intent behind the cutting and pasting of social media messages, etc.—even though it is well-known that much bullying is couched in ‘acceptable’ behaviors. Zero tolerance policies at schools, which have attempted to operationalize anti-bullying initiatives, have been stymied and thwarted by their own inflexibility.
More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that by attempting to operationalize (and penalize) bullying, we minimize the psychological aspects (no less than the social supports) involved in social aggression. We force a dynamic into a box, and expect (hope? pray?) bullies will not be smart enough to avoid being caught engaging in clear-cut code violations. At the very least, we seem to hope that a fine (which does not go to the victim) will act as a deterrent, and relieve us of the responsibility of probing the nature of shame, and helping victims negotiate public humiliation—unless, of course, fining is equated with repentance and redemption—and we all concur that it is the bully that needs redeeming, not the victim.
