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The early biopsychosocial development of boys and the origins of violence in

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DOI: 10.1002/imhj.21753

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DOI: 10.1002/imhj.21753

ARTICLE

The early biopsychosocial development of boys and the origins

of violence in males
Paul Golding1 Hiram E. Fitzgerald2

1 Santa Fe Boys Educational Foundation, Santa

Fe, New Mexico
2 Department of Psychology, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, Michigan
Correspondence
Paul Golding, Santa Fe Boys Educational
Foundation, Post Office Box 1312, Santa Fe,
NM 87504.
Email: santafeboys@comcast.net
ABSTRACT
We apply a biopsychosocial approach to introduce early-in-life experiences that
explain a significant part of the male preponderance in the perpetration of violence.
Early caregiver abuse and neglect, father absence, and exposure to family and neigh-
borhood violence exacerbate boys’ greater risk for aggressive behavior and increase
the probability of carrying out violent acts later in life. We examine the development
of the psychological self and explore conditions that encourage physical aggression,
focusing on the impact on the infant and toddler's emergent mental representation of
self, others, and self–other relationships. Boys’ slower developmental timetable in the
first years of life may enhance their vulnerability for disorganization in emergent neu-
robiological networks mediating organization of socioemotional relationships. Emer-
gent attachment and activation relationship systems may differentially affect risk and
resilience in boys and girls, particularly in single-parent families. Evidence has sug-
gested that the dramatic increase in single-parent families is especially linked to corre-
sponding increases in behavioral undercontrol, antisocial behavior, and the emergence
of violence in boys.

KEYWORDS
biopsychosocial approach, developmental systems, etiology of violence, fragile families, infant male neu-
robiology

This issue of the Infant Mental Health Journal follows sev-
eral lines of research finding that a significant part of the ori-
gins of violence lies in the environment of prenatal to tod-
dlerhood periods of development (Tremblay, 2015; Tremblay
& Côté, this issue). In many ways, this focus on the very
early periods of life reflects other examples of problematic
outcomes such as childhood psychopathologies and school
failure, also often found to have a basis in the first years of
life (Caspi et al., 2016; Fearon & Belsky, 2011; Fitzgerald
& Eiden, 2007; Hatzinikolaou & Murray, 2010; Lyons-Ruth
et al., 2017; Raine, this issue; Schore, 2017; Sroufe, 2016;
Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins, 2005). In addition, the
articles in this special issue focus on another important line
of research, which involves gender differences, concerning
predilections for problematic behaviors related to sex-specific
neurobiological development, especially prevalent when chil-
dren are raised under conditions of compromised caregiving
Infant Ment Health J. 2018;1–16. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imhj
(Golding & Fitzgerald 2016, 2017; Holden, 2005; Kigar &
Auger, 2013; Martel, 2013; McGinnis, Bockneck, Beeghly,
Rosenblum, & Muzik, 2015; Schore, 2017; Zahn-Waxler,
Shirtcliff, & Marceau. 2008).
The accounts of research in this collection mostly see
the individual child as existing within a set of nested rela-
tionships, each interacting with others in complex, dynamic,
and reciprocally influencing ways, affecting the biopsychoso-
cial development of a newly conceived or newly born child.
These interdependent relationships are depicted in Figure 1,
which is informed in part by relational developmental sys-
tems metatheory (Fausto-Sterling, Garcia-Coll, & Lamarre,
2012; Lerner, 1995; Lerner, Agans, DeSouza, & Hershberg,
2014; Overton, 1994, 2015; Witherington, 2015) and by a
biopsychosocial approach (Calkins, 2015; Dozier, Roben, &
Hoye., 2015; Zeanah & Humphreys, 2015). As such, influ-
ences involve the child's unique psychology and biology
© 2018 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health 1
2 GOLDING AND FITZGERALD

FIGURE 1 The nested environments of relational

developmental systems
TABLE 1 Arrests for violent offences by sex in the United States, 2015
No. of Persons Arrested %
Offense Charged Total Male Female Male Female
Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter 8,533 7,549 984 88.5 11.5
Rape 17,504 16,990 514 97.1 2.9
Robbery 73,230 62,721 10,509 85.6 14
Subtotal for murder, rape, and robbery 99,267 87,260 12,007 88 12
Aggravated assault 288,815 221,993 66,822 76.9 23
Total 388,082 309,253 78829 80 20
Source: U.S. Department of Justice. (2016a), Table 42

embedded within caregiver systems, which in turn are embed-
ded in social and cultural networks. The interactions among
these various structures help to shape the developing per-
sonality in both supportive and healthy ways and also in
unhealthy and negative directions. Notwithstanding the actual
diversity of developmental processes, this introductory arti-
cle abstracts a few of these and describes broadly how three
elements of the unique individual developing self (the psycho-
logical), the developing neurobiology (the biological), and the
diverse macrosocial environment of childrearing (the socioe-
conomic) may interact early in life in ways that embody fac-
tors that contribute to violent behavior in adolescence and
adulthood specifically for males. We present this introduction
as an example of how some of the biopsychosocial pieces may
interact to selectively demonstrate aspects of the complexity
of male development possibly related to violent outcomes.
By a very significant margin, most violence, including
violent crime, is committed by males. Starting in preschool
and elementary school, boys in the United States are more
likely to be disciplined and suspended for conduct problems
(Mortenson, 2011; Sickmund, Sladky, Kang, & Puzzanchera,
2011). By adolescence, the juvenile arrest rate for boys for
violent crime is four times greater than that for girls (U.S.
Department of Justice, 2015). In adulthood, the rate of males
committing violent crimes also is about four times greater. As
can be seen in Table 1, the numbers of those arrested for the
most violent crimes—murder, rape, and robbery—are even
more heavily male: 88%. Further reflecting this tendency for
males to commit more serious violent acts are the statistics on
imprisonment in state and federal penitentiaries for murder,
rape, robbery, and assault; the male population in these
prisons is about 20 times that for females for these crimes
(Tables 2 and 3). The authors in this special issue of the
Infant Mental Health Journal address the question, among
others, of why this male predominance exists from both
infant mental health and social ecology perspectives.
GOLDING AND FITZGERALD 3

TABLE 2 Number of sentenced prisoners under the jurisdiction of state correctional authority, by most serious offense, sex, race, and Hispanic
origin, December 31, 2014
All prisoners Male Female White Black Hispanic
All violent crime 696,900 663,600 33,500 210,400 263,800 152,900
% 100.00 95.22 4.81 30.19 37.85 21.94
Murder 171,700 161,500 10,300 46,000 68,100 43,700
% 100.00 94.06 6.00 26.79 39.66 25.45
Manslaughter 17,100 15,000 2,100 6,400 3,700 3,300
% 100.00 87.72 12.28 37.43 21.64 19.30
Rape/sexual assault 162,800 160,900 2,000 71,600 36,600 31,300
% 100.00 98.83 1.23 43.98 22.48 19.23
Robbery 168,600 161,200 7,500 33,500 88,600 26,700
% 100.00 95.61 4.45 19.87 52.55 15.84
Aggravated/simple assault 134,400 126,600 7,800 39,000 51,200 36,400
% 100.00 94.20 5.80 29.02 38.10 27.08
Other 42,200 38,500 3,800 14,000 15,500 11,400
% 100.00 91.23 9.00 33.18 36.73 27.01
Source: U.S. Department of Justice. (2016b), Appendix Table 5. Numbers are rounded to the nearest 100 to accommodate differences in data-collection techniques among
jurisdictions.

TABLE 3 Number of sentenced prisoners under the jurisdiction of federal correctional authority, by most serious offense, sex, race, and
Hispanic origin, September 30, 2015
All Prisoners Male Female White Black Hispanic
All violent crimes 13,700 13,200 500 3,500 6,900 1,300
% 100.00 96.35 3.65 25.55 50.36 9.49
Homicide 2,800 2,600 200 400 1,700 200
% 100.00 92.86 7.14 14.29 60.71 7.14
Robbery 6,900 6,700 200 2,400 3,900 600
% 100.00 97.10 2.90 34.78 56.52 8.70
Other 4,000 3,800 100 800 1,400 500
% 100.00 95.00 2.50 20.00 35.00 12.50
Source: U.S. Department of Justice. (2016b), Appendix Table 6. Numbers are rounded to the nearest 100 to accommodate differences in data-collection techniques among
jurisdictions.

What happens to males early in life that might contribute
to their being so much more at risk for perpetrating violent
acts in adolescence and adulthood? The current state of
knowledge does not permit predicting who will become
violent at the individual level but the science is able to
show probabilistically that there are individually unique
susceptibilities among (a) early abusive, neglectful, and
otherwise unhealthy immediate relational ecologies in which
some boys are raised as well as larger societal forces that may
affect the stability and health of the more proximal family
environment (Burt, Klump, Gorman-Smith, & Neiderhiser,
2016; Cabrera, Cook, McFadden, & Bradley, 2012; Caspi
et al., 2002; Fitzgerald, McKelvey, Schiffman, & Montañez,
2006; Zucker, Wong, Puttler, & Fitzgerald, 2003); (b) certain
genetic or epigenetic acquired characteristics that young
boys seem to be more prone to embody (Drury et al., 2012;
Entringer et al., 2011; Lester, Conradt, & Marsit, 2014;
Mitchell et al., 2014); and (c) the outcome of committing
violent acts in adolescence and adulthood (Eme, 2007, 2016;
Glenn & Raine, 2014; Mileva-Seitz et al., 2015; Raine, 2013;
Simpson & Belsky, 2016; Suomi, 2016). Exploring these
susceptibilities and how to address their alleviation is the
overarching intent of this special issue.
1 RELATIONAL DEVELOPMENTAL
M ETATH EO RY A ND T H E
E A R LY - I N - L I F E O R I G I N S O F
V I O L E N T B E H AV I O R I N M A L E S
1.1 Early development of the self
We begin with the psychological dimension. Among the most
profound advances in the field of human development over
the last 70 years is an appreciation of the factors influencing
4 GOLDING AND FITZGERALD
the development of the psychological self, defined as that
which provides one with an implicit sense of identity, feeling,
and character in relation to others. This broad sense of self
might be seen as an unconscious agent internal to the indi-
vidual, controlling and directing one's affective relations with
others and with the world, supplying one with a sense of one's
own subjectivity and intersubjectivity (Ammaniti & Gallese,
2014; Fonagy, Gergely, & Target, 2007; Mizen, 2014;
Reber & Reber, 1985). Concomitantly, there also has been
a significant growth in knowledge about the importance of
relationship with caregivers very early in life in shaping this
psychological entity of the individual self along healthy—or
otherwise—pathways (Beebe & Lachmann, 2014; Stern,
2000; Tronick, 2007; Zeanah & Lieberman, 2016).
An advantage of focusing on the self's early development
is that biological influences, as factors driving an individual's
development, are placed within a context of the individual's
growth in his or her unique, broadly defined caregiving envi-
ronment (Lerner et al., 2014; Overton, 2015; Sroufe, 2016).
The intent here in placing this at the beginning is to reduce
the deterministic nature often associated, correctly or incor-
rectly, with biology. Within this context, this article (and all
other articles in this volume) have a connection to the relation-
ships of fetus and mother (and mother–father marital relation-
ship), and later to the newborn's attachment relationships, to
the activation relationships, and so on that drive epigenetic
processes, neural networks mediating relationships, hormone
regulation, cognitive structures affecting brain circuits, and
much more. Hence, we assert that starting with dynamical
systems, the individual (self) and relationships are the correct
developmental trajectory for understanding biological orga-
nization and neurobiological mediation of human behavior,
decision making, and the concept of “who I am” as well as
“what I am.”
1.1.1 Attachment relationships
Bowlby's (1973) concept of the internal working model par-
allels contemporary discussions of the self and its connection
with early relationships with attachment figures. He noted
that the way caregivers related to an infant provides a child
with a strong sense of whether his or her self “will be judged
to be the sort of person towards whom anyone is likely to
respond in a helpful way” (p. 204). Hence, an infant can
experience an implicit unconscious feeling of being known
and accepted through what Tronick (2007) characterized
as the process of “meaning making” (p. 507), Stern (2000)
referred to as “affect attunement” (p. 138), Sander (2000)
called “moments of meeting” (p. 14), or Gaensbauer (2016)
described as “fittedness” (p. 175) between healthy parent–
infant dyads. When this happens, an internal representation
of connection to others can develop of being-in-relationship,
which will aid the individual in self-regulation, adaptation,
and communication. The child gains a sense of how emotional
experiences are met and given meaning.
Within the first postnatal trimester, infants learn to connect
sensory and perceptual events and to develop expectancies
about event occurrences (Fitzgerald & Porges, 1971). Watson
(1967) referred to event–event connectedness as contin-
gency awareness, from which the probabilistic relationship
between events generates expectancies, or within a different
theoretical framework, mental schemas (Piaget, 1952).
Awareness of contingencies or mental representations allows
for foundational feelings of security, agency, and coherence,
permitting the child to experience his or her worthiness
and, perhaps above all, safety. Beebe and Lachmann (2014)
asserted that expectancies provide the foundation for pat-
terns that correspond to tremendously powerful affect that
endures throughout life. The child can feel sensed, seen, and
understood by a caregiver's attention, facial and vocal affect,
touch, and by other aspects of relationship communication.
This internal working model develops into a kind of internal
emotional flexibility based on feelings of being known and
secure and also founded on the ability to know one's own
and an other's mind. Such a felicitous beginning in the first
months of life provides a solid foundation for later, more
complex developmental challenges and responses, as the
intricacies of development and demands of living increase
(Cicchetti & Rogosch, 2017; Sroufe, 2016).
However, when the self is experienced negatively and one's
needs in early life are met consistently with abuse, neglect,
absence, or parental psychopathology, a child, and later an
adolescent or adult, may come to experience his or her self as
composed of undesirable and unlovable parts mediated by a
negative internal working model of how one is in the world.
The self lacks affective immediacy and is cut off, undifferenti-
ated (Mizen, 2014). Beebe and Lachmann (2014) provided an
instance of this from their clinical observations with the term
discrepant affect, a situation when, for example, a mother
smiles at the infant's distress. Instead of a sense of being
in harmony, the dyadic relationship is one of disharmony,
misattunment, derailment, and mismatches (Gaensbauer,
2016), enacted by frightening, intruding, mocking, or criti-
cizing actions on the caregiver's part (Fonagy et al., 2007).
Such unhealed disruptive experiences repeated often—likely
passed on from a caregiver who suffered a similar experience
early in life—could lead a child to more defensive internal
unconscious stances vis a vis the outer world: less flexible
and certainly less able to interact openly with unanticipated
situations with a “lack of coherence” in the child's sense
of self (Sander, 2002; also see Fonagy, Luyten, Allison, &
Campbell, 2016). Cicchetti and Rogosch (2017) declared
that “Maltreatment ushers in a probabilistic epigenesis for
children characterized by an increased likelihood of failure
and disruption in the successful resolution of major devel-
opmental tasks that have great implications for functioning
GOLDING AND FITZGERALD
over the life span” (p. 17). Thus, much of the basis of how
individuals interact with the world around them has to do
with how they experience relationships with others very early
in life.
1.1.2 Exploration: Activation relationships
Although the vast majority of attachment research is based
on mother–infant relationships, attachments also are formed
between fathers and infants, as are early mental representa-
tions of fathers (Lamb, 2002; McMahon, 2013). Emotion reg-
ulation during infancy and early childhood is strengthened by
stable father presence in the home (Bocknek, Brophy-Herb,
Fitzgerald, Schiffman, & Vogel, 2014; Cabrera et al., 2012),
routine active play (Bocknek, Dayton, Raveau, Richardson,
Brophy-Herb, & Fitzgerald, 2017), and emotional availabil-
ity (Volling, McElwain, Notaro, & Herrera, 2002). However,
a continued open question concerns what characteristics of
father parenting contribute uniquely to child development
(Cabrera & Tamis-LeMonda, 2013), and how they should be
assessed (Roggman, Fitzgerald, Bradley, & Raikes, 2002).
Research begun by Paquette (2004) has suggested that the
long-term outcomes of father–son relationships may not be
best assessed by the Strange Situation (SS) procedures that
dominate attachment research (Ainsworth & Whitten, 1969).
Noting that fathers’ caregiving behavior tends to focus primar-
ily on activities that arouse or excite children and also limit
setting, Paquette and Bigras (2010) developed the Risky Sit-
uation (RS) to study relationship dynamics that are different
from those assessed via the SS. The activation relationship
refers to “the affective bond that enables children to open up
to the outside world, focusing primarily on the parental situ-
ation of risk taking and control” (Paquette & Dumont, 2013,
p. 1). In studies comparing the SS and RS methods, inves-
tigators have found that the RS situation is a better predic-
tor of children's socioemotional development than is the SS
(Dumont & Paquette, 2013; Paquette & Bogras, 2010). Other
investigators have studied activation relationships through
rough-and-tumble play (RTP), a form of play that especially
illustrates father's role in arousing and exciting his children.
Flanders et al. (2010) noted that when fathers do not exer-
cise dominance in RTP with preschool children, they are more
likely 5 years later to have poorer emotion regulation and
high levels of physical aggression, especially boys. To date,
the activation relationship theory, which “stipulates that limit-
setting is important in permitting children to feel safe and
secure while exploring” (Dumont & Paquette, 2013, p. 442),
provides a new perspective on what children, boys in par-
ticular, may be missing in father-absent homes, or in father-
present homes where limit-setting is not part of father RTP
behavior. All infants must eventually detach or separate from
their mothers (Rheingold & Eckerman, 1970), and, within the
separation process, it seems that fathers’ limit setting is more
5
important for emotion and behavior regulation in boys than it
is for girls.
1.1.3 Relationship continuity and
discontinuity
The relational developmental systems view of human devel-
opment recognizes that both continuity and discontinuity are
aspects of human development. That is, for example, the
dyadic relationship between infant and caregiver can be con-
sistent, continuous, and responsive or it may be inconsistent,
discontinuous, and unresponsive. Continuity and discontinu-
ity will vary from time to time over the course of development,
and one or the other pattern will likely come to predominate
in any particular infant–caregiver relationship.
In this process of relational development, the early years
loom disproportionately large in the effect on the developing
individual. Sroufe et al. (2005), in summarizing the findings
of the Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth
to Adulthood, said: “Past experience and former patterns of
adaptation are never erased; they are always part of an increas-
ingly elaborated structure” (p. 221). Beebe and Lachmann
(2014) noted that styles of attachment in Year 1 predict organi-
zation of experience in young adulthood. Thus, this discussion
of the earliest days of life is about how the quality of experi-
ences in these days and months shapes psyche in very forceful
ways for the rest of the life span.
In the case where discontinuous experiences predominate,
efforts made in later periods are capable of repairing some
of the difficulties experienced early on. Nonetheless, as time
passes, such amelioration becomes increasingly difficult. The
time-limited brain plasticity of the early years means that
attempts later may result in a “stuck-on, adhesive” quality
which may “enable dissociation from … unbearable affec-
tive states,” but these efforts and the outward manifestation of
change that they bring may not signal a return to the fullness of
psychological health (Mizen, 2014, p. 326). Fitzgerald, Wong,
and Zucker (2013) suggested that boys reared from birth in
extreme psychopathology characterized by paternal antisocial
personality disorder and alcoholism, maternal depression, and
family conflict already are “alcoholics” by age 5 with respect
to their mental representations of self and expectancies related
to alcohol consumption (Zucker, Kincaid, Fitzgerald, &
Bingham, 1995).
Within this context of very early discontinuous relation-
ships, what is the connection between the early development
of the self and the perpetration of violent acts? Two of the
authors of this special issue have put forth the finding that
aggressive behavior in children peaks, on average, between
2 to 4 years of age (Tremblay & Côté, this issue; Tremblay
& Nagin, 2006). With nurturing caregiving, physical aggres-
sion usually declines after reaching a peak. Thus, attuned care-
giving (secure attachment and the healthy self-development
6 GOLDING AND FITZGERALD
of a predominately continuous relationship) has been sug-
gested as a way to socialize biologically based aggressive
energies early in life into constructive channels for the pur-
pose of living cooperatively in human community (Fonagy,
2003). In contrast, maltreatment experienced early also has
been described as a way that children are toughened and come
to maintain their physical aggressiveness. Some also have
suggested that this is an evolutionary adaptation of the self
so that in certain environments children are prepared to with-
stand the rigors they will face growing up and into adulthood
(Belsky, 2012: Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzen-
doorn, 2007; Belsky & Pluess, 2013; Del Guidice, 2009; Fon-
agy et al., 2016; Meaney, 2010). The connections between
the development of the self as an outcome of the quality of
parental care—predominately continuous or discontinuous—
and violent behavior are broadly indicated in these contrasting
end results.
Looking for an explanation of the underlying psy-
chodynamics for these outcomes, another of the authors
contributing to this collection has suggested the relevance
of the concept of mentalization to describe the processes for
what transpires intrapsychically to determine the outcome
that may result in perpetrating violence later in life (Mizen,
2009a, 2009b, this issue). In this connection, Fonagy and
colleagues (Allen, Fonagy, & Bateman, 2008; Fonagy,
Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002; Fonagy et al., 2007; Fonagy
& Target, 1996; Target & Fonagy, 1996) posited that an
infant receiving adequate care through secure attachment
and developing a healthy subjective sense of self is able to
mentalize, an ability that can begin to develop as early as 3 or
4 years of age (Fonagy, Luyten, & Strathearn, 2011), as does
the beginning of autobiographical memory. Autobiographic
memory, in turn, is shaped by meaning making processes
and interactions that influence the very young child's sense
of intersubjective self (Fitzgerald et al., 2013; Tronick &
Beeghly, 2011). That is, the child starts to be able to self-
reflect and also to appreciate that others, by self-reflecting,
have their unique takes on reality, which may be distinct from
the child's own. If one is able to mentalize, at an early age
one has begun to develop some consciousness about one's
own emotions and the emotions of those with whom one
interacts. This ability allows some distance from oppressive,
hostile, and other negative feelings, both originating from
one's own self and from others, to reflect on one's experience
(Fonagy et al., 2016; Hill, 2015). Others have noted that with
abusive, misattuned, or neglectful caregiving in the earliest
years, this capacity to mentalize does not develop or develops
less than that under favorable conditions, so the capability to
appreciate the feeling environment around one, including the
uniqueness of others’ mental states, is to some extent absent,
and the space to reflect on one's inner world is partially
reduced or missing (Allen et al., 2008; Fitzgerald et al., 2013;
Hill, 2015; McMahon, 2013; Slade et al., 2005).
As an example of how mentalization may be related to
physical aggression and violence, we consider the concept
of hostile attribution bias (Dodge, 2006, 2011; Dodge et al.,
2015; Dodge & Pettit, 2003). This has been suggested to
describe the propensity of some very young children (predom-
inately studied in boys) to attribute hostile intentions to oth-
ers’ ambiguous hostile behavior or expression. Dodge (2006)
described this developmental outcome as a kind of early sign
of later chronic antisocial, delinquent, and criminal behavior,
a condition that results in great financial and emotional cost
to society observed in about 7% of the adolescent and adult
male population. Hostile attribution bias has been found to be
associated with maltreatment received by children during the
first 5 years of life. Dodge (2006) maintained that social cog-
nitive processes of early persecution from abuse and neglect
become part of the self and are projected in anticipatory situa-
tions that are prematurely assessed to have hostile and threat-
ening overtones. Thus, children receiving maltreatment early
are at risk of overattributing (and possibly acting on by means
of physical aggression) hostile and provocative intent in
others.
The concept of mentalization appears to be another way of
understanding this development of the hostile attribution bias
phenomenon, intrapsychically focusing on the development
of the self. Prolonged experiences of developmental adver-
sity seem to undermine a child's ability to process and com-
prehend information concerning the mental states of others
(Fonagy et al., 2002). Growing up in an environment of mal-
treatment (discontinuous relationships) can prevent an indi-
vidual from being able to check out—“correct or confirm his
gut reaction”—the ambiguous hostile intent he may encounter
later in adolescence and adulthood (Hill, 2015). Instead, the
access to affect is denied, split off, or dissociated by means
of psychological defense mechanisms operating at the uncon-
scious level to disrupt real, or in this case, very possibly, imag-
ined or misunderstood communication like that implied by the
term hostile attribution bias. The point is that early experi-
ences of neglect and abuse color the self, rendering one less
capable of perceiving others in a balanced way.
Fonagy et al. (2016) speculated that in “invalidating and
emotionally” abusive early environments, an infant dissoci-
ates from his or her caregiver's hostile, hurtful thoughts and
feelings and, in the process, is unable to mentalize. The child
is left with a less robust sense of self than might develop in a
household where a secure attachment is possible. The infant
does not establish a basis to comprehend his or her own emo-
tional states; he or she fails to develop the capacity to regu-
late affect; and not having had the feeling state sufficiently or
accurately mirrored back to him or her, the infant simply has
not discovered him- or herself. Regarding hostile attribution
bias, the child engages in what Fonagy et al. (2016) referred
to as “automatic functioning,” with less reliance on execu-
tive control and more on fight–flight–freeze type of reactions
GOLDING AND FITZGERALD
(p. 791). The locus of mental operation shifts from the pre-
frontal cortex to subcortical regions of the brain.
Regarding why the failure to mentalize might be so much
more strongly manifested as violent behavior in males, we
turn to some different biological susceptibilities of young
boys.
1.2 Development of the self and male biology
A great deal of research has pointed to biological compo-
nents in the etiology of human violence perpetration (Dodge,
2006; Glenn, this issue; Moffitt, Caspi, Rutter, & Silva, 2001;
Raine, 2013, this issue; Tremblay & Côté, this issue). Fur-
ther, for some time it has been widely believed that these
biological components interact with environmental adversity
early in life to make violent behavior more likely in adoles-
cence and adulthood (Beaver, Schwartz, & Gajos, 2015; Jaf-
fee, 2009, this issue; Tremblay & Côté, this issue). Research
in this area has shown that among the relatively small pop-
ulation of human beings who come to perpetrate violence as
adolescents and adults, males seem more likely to experience
these epigenetic effects of biological vulnerability and envi-
ronmental adversity early in life in ways associated with the
male statistical preponderance in this unfavorable outcome.
A number of articles in the current special issue of the Infant
Mental Health Journal discuss the evidence for this combina-
tion and the male involvement in the outcome (in particular,
see Glenn; Jaffee; Raine; Sitnick, Galan, & Shaw; and Trem-
blay & Côté, all this issue). Some of the indications for this
biological basis to male violence are found, for example, in
the lower male heart rate, in specific genes, which are more
prevalent in males, and in prenatal testosterone exposure, also
much greater in males.
A low heart rate is strongly associated with antisocial
behavior, and males are widely found to have lower heart rates
than have females, even as soon as 7 days old (Choy, Raine,
Venables, & Farrington, 2017; Raine, 2013). Hence, males
with low heart rates have been found—more likely than are
males with higher heart rates—to engage in antisocial crim-
inal behavior. Some evidence has pointed to this being the
result of impulsive stimulation-seeking (Portnoy et al., 2014):
sensation-seeking theory … rests on the premise
that a low resting heart rate is a marker of low
autonomic arousal…. Low arousal is hypothe-
sized to be an unpleasant physiological state,
leading those with low resting heart rates to
seek stimulating behaviors, including antisocial
behaviors, to increase their level of physiologi-
cal arousal to a more optimal level. (p. 292)
Whatever the causal relationships, this has been considered
one of the important explanations for the link between being
male and violent criminality. Females with low heart rates also
7
are more likely to engage in antisocial activity; however, fewer
females have low heart rates.
Similarly, having a specific gene like the low-activity allele
of the monoamine oxidase-A gene (MAOA-L) is associated
with antisocial behavior in both males and females, when
combined with adverse environmental conditions such as
receiving abusive or neglectful caregiving early in life (Caspi
et al., 2002: Eme, 2011, 2016; Raine, 2013, this issue;
Twitchell, Hanna, Cook, Fitzgerald, & Zucker, 2000). This
is one of the more cited examples of epigenetic influence
where environmental conditions and cell chemistry interact,
resulting in particular antisocial behaviors. Like low heart
rate, the MAOA-L gene is more likely to be found in males
and thus also is a candidate for explaining the extent of the
gender difference in antisocial behavior. Moreover, there is
evidence that the expression of aspects of antisocial behavior
associated with MAOA-L are more evident (expressed)
postpubescence than is the case during the prepubescent
years (Twitchell et al., 2001).
A last consideration in this partial survey of the biological
basis for the male preponderance in violence is testosterone,
a hormone that plays a role in the shaping of the development
of boys’ reproductive systems, genitals, brains, and behavior
both in the pre- and perinatal phases of development. Testos-
terone also has significantly large effects on a small number
of females who have a condition called “congenital adrenal
hyperplasia” (CAH), which entails an abnormally large (for a
female) exposure to prenatal testosterone (Eme, 2015; Hines,
2011; Yildirim & Derksen, 2012). Boys exposed to higher lev-
els of testosterone have been shown to be less empathetic, and
more aggressive and assertive. CAH girls also have some of
these traits, but as with a slow heart rate and the MAOA-
L gene, boys are more likely to be exposed. Consequently,
when combined with other conditions of the caregiving envi-
ronment, boys and adult males are considered more likely to
engage in antisocial behavior.
Perhaps another element at the base of greater boys’ sus-
ceptibility to these kinds of biological vulnerabilities is the
broad principle that the weaker organism is more susceptible
to adversity than is the stronger one. Boys, on average, have
long been considered to be more at risk in the prenatal and
perinatal stages of development than are girls and that
female infants are stronger organisms than are
male infants. In general … female infants are
less disease prone, less likely to die, less irri-
table, less aggressive, more oral, and more
advanced in social-emotional and verbal behav-
iors compared to male infants. (Fitzgerald, 1977,
p. 117)
After birth, boys generally are considered to have slower
developmental timetables (ZERO TO THREE, 2018), and this
condition lasts well beyond adolescence. The World Health
8 GOLDING AND FITZGERALD
Organization (2014) maintained that “Adolescent girls tend
to reach biologically defined developmental milestones up to
two years ahead of adolescent boys.” Schore (2017) wrote
about boys that “Due to this maturation delay, developing
males also are more vulnerable over a longer period of time to
stressors in the social environment (attachment trauma) and
toxins in the physical environment (endocrine disruptors)”
(p. 15).
Behaviorally, this greater susceptibility may manifest in an
infant's reduced ability to self-regulate when an attuned care-
giver is not available to relate to the infant, as described in the
preceding section on the self. Hence, “this longer period of
developmental neurobiological immaturity is expressed in an
oversensitivity to and inefficiency in regulating more intense
and chronic forms of interpersonal stress” (Schore, 2017,
p. 27). Following his review of research on the fetal and
neonatal developing male brain, Schore (2017) concluded:
The slower maturation exposes the develop-
ing male brain to stressful altered levels of
testosterone and corticosteroids during critical
periods of right brain development. Attachment
trauma such as abuse and/or neglect interfere
with or preclude optimal interactive stress reg-
ulation, and because they occur in critical peri-
ods of right brain development they epigeneti-
cally generate enduring maturational failures in
the limbic system and the HPA, structural deficits
that are re-activated in adolescence, a time of
substantial remodeling of cortical and limbic
circuits. (p. 27)
Consistent with this, Beebe and Lachmann (2014), study-
ing 4-month-olds, concluded that “male infants were over-
represented in future disorganized infants” (p. 119) and that
the internal working models of disorganized infants—“more
likely to be male”—“would show many forms of intrapersonal
and interpersonal conflict, intermodal discordance, or contra-
diction, leading to confusion and incoherent working mod-
els … with expectancies of emotional distress and emotional
incoherence … both in the self and partner” (p. 120).
Perhaps because of boys’ slower development, infant boys
display greater vulnerability to maternal depression than do
girls. Many researchers have reported this difference (Carter,
Garrity-Rokous, Chazan-Cohen, Little, & Briggs-Gowan,
2001; Hammen, Hazel, Brennan, & Najman, 2012; McGinnis
et al., 2015; Mileva-Seitz et al., 2015; Shaw & Gilliam,
2017; Shaw & Vondra, 1995; Terrell, Conradt, Dansereau,
LaGasse, & Lester, this issue; Tronick & Weinberg, 2000;
Weinberg, Olson, Beeghly, & Tronick, 2006). A recent
example is the research supplied by Beeghly et al. (2017).
Studying infants from 2 to 18 months, and examining the
relationship between attachment security and the degree of
maternal depression experienced by the caregiver, they found
that “boys, as compared to girls, may be more vulnerable
to early caregiving risks such as maternal depression, with
negative consequences for mother-child attachment security
in toddlerhood” (p. 53).
In sum, boys’ unique biological susceptibilities and their
slower developmental timetables in the first years of life seem
to contribute to their vulnerability for disorganization in emer-
gent neurobiological networks mediating the organization of
socioemotional relationships described in the preceding sec-
tion. Now, we examine an example of the influence of the
larger society that might further add to boys’ early-in-life
exposure and contribute to the perpetration of violence when
older.
1.3 The macro-environment of inequality and
families: The effect on the developing self and
boys becoming at risk for committing violence
In keeping with the probabilistic nature of developmental out-
comes and with the interactional view of the biopsychoso-
cial approach, we now focus on the larger social environment
where an infant is born and where her or his relation to care-
givers takes place. This also can influence the quality of the
development of the very young self of an infant, as both care-
givers and children are embedded in and affected by broader
social networks even in very early life (Lerner, 1995) and by
neighborhood quality and exposure to violence (Burt et al.,
2016; Fitzgerald et al., 2006: Galan, Shaw, Dision, & Wilson,
2017).
Two possible detrimental aspects of these macro-
environments are of particular significance with respect to
the origins of violence in males. The first is the expanding
social, economic, and racial inequalities transpiring in U.S.
society. The second is the way that this socioeconomic phe-
nomenon contributes to the negative interpersonal outcomes
of single parenthood—usually single motherhood (McLana-
han & Jencks, 2015, Spring; Putnam, 2015; Schneider,
Waldfogel, & Brooks-Gunn, 2015). These two reflections of
societal inequality affecting families seem to have proceeded
virtually hand in hand for the last 50 years in the United
States (McLanahan & Percheski, 2008). The combination
also seems to hold increasingly detrimental effects for chil-
dren, especially boys, and this will be considered with an eye
to understanding how, probabilistically, inequality and single
motherhood might contribute to the male preponderance in
committing violent acts as adolescents and adults. As Harper
and McLanahan (2004) noted, “Controlling for income and
all other factors, youths in father-absent families … had
significantly higher odds of incarceration than those from
mother-father families” (p. 384), and as noted previously,
most of the incarcerated are males.
Single-parent families have been the object of a long-
term research project under the Fragile Families and Child
GOLDING AND FITZGERALD
Wellbeing Study at Princeton and Columbia Universities,
where a substantial database on the phenomenon has been
accumulated. Using this database, many scholars have stud-
ied the growth of such families, their structure, implications
for public policy, and the consequences for society of their
proliferation in the last three decades (McLanahan, Garfinkel,
Mincy, & Donahue, 2010). In general, as American society
has become more stratified socioeconomically, this growing
inequality also has become reflected in an increase in “fragile
families” and a decline in the quality of caregiving practices
among less advantaged parents (McLanahan & Jencks, 2015,
Spring; Willcox & Wang, 2017). To some extent, the two-
parent family and marriage seem to have become a select priv-
ilege enhancing the well-being of children fortunate enough to
grow up in such circumstances (Autor & Wesserman, 2013;
Parker & Stepler, 2017; Wilcox & Wang, 2017).
Fragile families are defined as those families where a birth
has occurred to an unwed mother. The father and mother may
cohabit, or they may live separately and have a romantic rela-
tionship, or they may have no such relationship. “Despite
their high hopes, unmarried parents’ bonds are fragile, with
over 60 percent of nonmarital unions dissolving within five
years of their child's birth” (McLanahan & Beck, 2010,
p. 21; McLanahan & Sawhill, 2015). Among the most often
observed features of such families are that most of the par-
ents are young compared to married parents at the time of a
child's birth; they also are poorer than married parents; and the
parents of these families are generally less educated, usually
with no more than a high-school diploma. Many of the par-
ents are racial or ethnic minorities, although the proportions
of White fragile families have been growing (McLanahan &
Jencks, 2015, Spring).
What is the nature of the association between growing eco-
nomic inequality and the growth in fragile families? One rela-
tionship that several researchers have noted is that changes in
the economy generally, especially following globalization and
the need for more educated workers in competitive U.S. indus-
tries, have led to the decline of blue-collar jobs usually held
by male workers. In turn, fewer males are able to attain the
minimum standard of stable income to be desirable marriage
partners (Autor, Dorn, & Hanson, 2017; Autor & Wesserman,
2013; McLanahan & Percheski, 2008). This picture is further
aggravated by problems occurring among poorly educated
men who often have histories of incarceration, poor mental
and physical health, and who are unable to provide emotional
stability to their children and families (Lerman, 2010).
The statistic that perhaps best captures this broad societal
change is the proportion of children born or raised in single-
parent homes. In the 1950s, 4% of births were to unmarried
parents (Putnam, 2015, p. 61). More recently, this figure has
climbed to 35% (Annie E. Casey, 2017). While a substan-
tial proportion of the increase in fragile families is related
to macroeconomic trends having to do with globalization, as
9
noted earlier, the fact of its rapid growth both signifies and
reflects other changes of culture and civic life that have fol-
lowed along class and racially stratified patterns. Perhaps the
most acknowledged of these are changing cultural attitudes
about sex, contraception, childbearing, and marriage (Wilcox,
Wolfinger, & Stokes, 2015). This includes, for example, the
lessening of a stigma against having children out of marriage
(Putnam, 2015, p. 62). For reasons that seem to have to do with
the susceptibility of the poor and working classes to certain
societal trends, the changes in norms have affected them more
than the middle and upper classes (Wilcox & Wang, 2017).
The roots of this increase in children born to single moth-
ers may be many and are often disputed; however, one result is
clear from several reports (Lundberg, Pollak, & Stearns, 2016;
McLanahan & Jencks, 2015, Spring; Ribar, 2015; Waldfo-
gel, Craigie, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010; Wilcox & Wang, 2017):
Many children born and raised in these family situations are,
on average, likely to receive less financial and emotional sup-
port than they would otherwise be able to take advantage of.
Further, the children do not fare as well as the children of
dual-parent families in terms of cognitive abilities and emo-
tional health as observed in internalizing and externalizing
behaviors, and also are not as physically healthy as children
of married couples. The likelihood of child abuse also is
greater.
Studies have found a number of reasons that might explain
the pathways or the connections between fragile families and
lower child well-being (Masarik & Conger, 2017; Osborne
& McLanahan, 2007; Ribar, 2015; Waldfogel et al., 2010).
Probabilistically, these factors also reduce the likelihood
that the development of the psychological self will progress
along healthy lines. Among the reasons are the lower income
typical of fragile families, which means that medical and
psychological services, for example, are less affordable.
In addition, parents who are stressed by conflict, lack of
economic resources, or the experience of racial or economic
discrimination might not be able to provide the needed sensi-
tivity and responsiveness to their children (Savell, Womack,
Wilson, Shaw, & Dishion, this issue). For example, fragile
families are more likely to have just one adult with less time
to devote to the well-being of a child. In addition, the data
indicate that the fragile family parents, whether single moth-
ers or cohabiting couple, are more likely to suffer adverse
mental health, including depression and other psychological
problems. These mental health problems may follow from the
parental stress often associated with single parenthood. For
children, family instability—living with unstable, complex
family arrangements of unrelated adults and related and partly
related or unrelated children—also is a source of stress. These
factors also have been observed to negatively affect the qual-
ity of mothering. In the many cases where the relationship
between the mother and father is not amicable, this might be
reflected in conflict that also could diminish parenting skills.
10
Are boys and girls affected differently in fragile families,
and is there any evidence that this affects the development of
the psychological self, especially in boys? Some circumstan-
tial evidence for this proposition of differential effects comes
from recent economic analyses, which call public policy
attention to the disadvantages to boys. Notable among these
studies is Bertrand and Pan (2013), who examined “parental
inputs” such as the amount and quality of attention provided to
boys before they start kindergarten and related these to prob-
lems of school expulsion in Grade 8; Chetty, Hendren, Lin,
Majerovitz, and Scuderi (2015), who found that males grow-
ing up in poor, single-parent families were less likely to be
legally employed in their 20s than were females raised under
similar circumstances; Chetty, Hendren, Jones, and Porter
(2018), who found that among African American children,
males persistently show lower levels of economic mobility,
as compared to Whites and to African American females, and
that these differences in economic mobility are more likely to
diminish in communities with “low poverty rates, low levels
of racial bias … and high rates of father presence” (p. 42);
and Autor, Figlio, Karbownik, Roth, and Wasserman (2016),
who found that “boys born to low education and unmarried
mothers have a higher incidence of truancy and behav-
ioral problems throughout elementary and middle school”
(p. 1).
In a separate analysis, economists Autor and Wasserman
in Wayward Sons: The Emerging Gender Gap in Labor
Markets and Education (2013) concluded that the reasons for
the failure on the part of so many males to respond to market
signals and pursue education to take advantage of better
employment opportunities has to do with what they refer to
as “pre-market factors” (p. 27). They found that almost all of
these are related to the problems faced by boys who are being
raised by single mothers. For example, boys who grow up in
single-mother households are much more likely than are girls
to engage in behaviors related to low self-control. In addition,
they are more likely to engage in delinquent behavior if
raised in single-parent homes where there is no father in their
lives.
In closing this discussion of the macro-environment, note
that although there are more single-parent mother families
(˜8.5 million), the rate of growth (4%) in such families has
been slower over the past 60 years than the ninefold increase in
single-parent father families. Today, there are nearly 3 million
households where children are reared without a residential
mother—about 24% of the total of single-parent households in
2011 (Livingston, 2013). About half of children reared with-
out a single mother live with a single father, mostly older chil-
dren beyond the infant/toddler phase of development (U.S.
Census Bureau, 2016). Little is known about child outcomes
in single-parent father fragile families, particularly whether
daughters rather than sons experience increases in risk for life-
course affective or behavioral difficulties.
GOLDING AND FITZGERALD
2 CO NC LU SI O N
We have treated three possible intertwining aspects of
the development of boys—the psychological self, their
neurobiology, and the contemporary phenomenon of the
fragile family. The objective was to indicate the different
vulnerabilities, viewed from a developmental perspective,
that might contribute to explaining the male predominance
in the perpetration of violence in adolescence and adulthood.
The article also has emphasized how these different aspects
of development might affect each other, and it has done so
while drawing attention to the probabilistic nature of any one
outcome.
As noted earlier, it is becoming increasingly established
that many, if not most, psychopathologies have their roots
early in life and are based in the quality of what Bowlby (1973)
called the “Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation” (EEA).
Schore (2012) defined this as the “psychological space that
a particular culture creates to scaffold the emotional bond-
ing between principle caregivers and infants” (p. 51). If the
quality of this space declines, as Schore (2012) maintained
is occurring, the United States should see indicators of physi-
cal and mental pathologies increase. These indicators are cap-
tured in such phenomena as the rapid and large increase in
fragile families and also in measures of psychopathologies
affecting the young. Thus, not surprisingly, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (2013) found in its Mental
Health Surveillance Among Children, United States, 2005–
2011:
Boys were more likely than girls to have most of
the disorders, including ADHD, behavioral or
conduct problems, ASD, anxiety, Tourette syn-
drome, and cigarette dependence, and boys were
more likely than girls to die by suicide. Girls
were more likely to have an alcohol use disor-
der, and adolescent girls were more likely to have
depression. (p. 15)
Schore (2012) saw the “decrement of the EEA” primarily in
terms of the environment affecting the mother's ability to pro-
vide a secure relationship for her infant so that the attachment
process, and the development of the self described earlier, may
proceed in a biologically and psychologically healthy way
(p. 53). As this introductory article has intended to demon-
strate, to understand this phenomenon on the dyadic level also
requires appreciating the context within which this relation-
ship takes place as well as the unique biological susceptibili-
ties of prenatal and infant boys, and this requires also taking a
step back to see the larger picture of the social economy and its
corollaries as described earlier and as captured in the growth
of economic inequality and of single-parent families, among
other society-wide phenomena.
GOLDING AND FITZGERALD
To address these multiple causes, several contributors to
this special issue have suggested interventions. Early, high-
quality daycare is one proposal (García, Heckman, & Ziff,
this issue). Another is the suggestion that rather than focus-
ing on adolescent interventions for boys, preventative efforts
need to target at-risk future mothers and infant girls who will
be the mothers of tomorrow (Tremblay & Côtá, this issue).
A third suggestion is that to better prevent domestic violence,
the early-in-life origins of the behavior need to be the aim of
interventions, both preventatively, before and after birth, and
also as adults in a clinical context. In other words, efforts of
an evidence-based psychosocial nature are proposed (Corvo,
this issue). Two themes that call out for more attention in many
of the articles of this issue are the need to take sex differences
more seriously in research on violence and concomitantly, the
importance of an early-life focus for this costly social issue.
CONFLICT OF INTEEST
The authors have no conflicts of interest.
FU N DING INFORMAT ION
None
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How to cite this article: Golding P, Fitzgerald HE.
The early biopsychosocial development of boys and
the origins of violence in males. Infant Ment Health J.
2018;1–16. https://doi.org/10.1002/imhj.21753