ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on girls’ aggression across the life course, specifically examining the long-term outcomes of girls’ aggression. The participants in the studies discussed herein come from a large disadvantaged, community-based research sample of families—the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project. This study is unusual: It includes a large sample of girls and boys within each of the risk profiles (e.g., aggressive, withdrawn, aggressive, and withdrawn) based on comparisons to their same-gender peers. This ongoing intergenerational study commenced in 1976–1978 when the participants were elementary school-age children. Currently, these individuals are parents of young children. The chapter is organized temporally through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, extending to the early outcomes for the offspring of the aggressive girls. We first describe the trajectories of highly aggressive girls in the Concordia sample in middle 254childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. We then examine a number of outcomes predicted from aggression when the girls have become parents, including maternal health, parenting and environment, and developmental and health outcomes for the offspring. We conclude the chapter by positing some important conclusions and implications, and proposing recommendations for intervention and policy based on our results to date.
