Early Childhood Physical Aggression and Child Maltreatment: A Bibliometric Analysis of Research Trends, Knowledge Structure and Emerging Themes
This bibliometric analysis of 268 studies reveals that research on early childhood physical aggression and maltreatment is predominantly US-centric and focused on family-level framing, while exhibiting limited international collaboration and notable gaps in keywords related to inhibitory control, language, and intervention.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the first few years of life, almost every child learns to hit, push, or bite. This is a normal part of growing up, a way for toddlers to express frustration before they have the words to say what is wrong. For most children, this physical aggression fades as they learn to talk and control their impulses. But for a small group of children, the hitting and pushing do not stop; it stays high or even gets worse as they get older. Scientists have long known that children who follow this difficult path are more likely to face serious behavioral problems later in life. At the same time, researchers have identified that children who suffer abuse or neglect are much more likely to show these persistent aggressive behaviors. The link between being hurt and hurting others seems clear, yet the two fields of study have largely remained separate. One group of scientists focuses on how children develop aggression, while another group focuses on the effects of maltreatment. They speak different languages, publish in different journals, and rarely look at the same data together.
To understand how these two worlds connect, two researchers set out to map the entire landscape of scientific writing on this topic. They did not conduct new experiments or interview families. Instead, they gathered and analyzed 268 published studies from 1990 to 2025 that looked at both early childhood physical aggression and child maltreatment. By using a method called bibliometric analysis, which treats scientific papers like data points to reveal patterns, they created a picture of what the research community has actually been studying, who is doing the work, and where the gaps in knowledge remain. Their goal was to see if the two fields had truly merged into a single understanding or if they were still drifting apart.
The map they built reveals a field that is growing but heavily concentrated. Half of all the studies came from the United States, with Canada and Germany following far behind. The research is dominated by a small number of highly productive authors and institutions, mostly located in American universities. While the number of papers published each year has risen steadily since the 1990s, peaking around 2018, the work remains surprisingly isolated. International collaboration is rare, with only about 5 percent of the studies involving authors from more than one country. This suggests that the conversation about why children hit and why they are hurt is happening in a few specific places, rather than being a global dialogue.
When the researchers looked at the themes that tie these studies together, they found that the most central and well-developed idea is the role of the family. The research consistently frames physical aggression as a problem rooted in family dynamics and relationships. However, other important themes appear on the edges of the map. Topics like the mental health of mothers, specific parenting risks, and the broader concept of child development exist, but they are not strongly connected to the main body of work. They are like small islands that have not yet been linked by bridges to the mainland. The analysis also showed that while the words "violence" and "aggression" have been used since the beginning of the dataset, the specific combination of "physical aggression" and "child maltreatment" as a joint topic is a more recent development. It took until around 2017 for researchers to consistently use these terms together in the same study, suggesting that the explicit linking of these two concepts is still maturing.
Despite the volume of research, the map highlights significant blind spots. The most frequent words in the titles and abstracts focus on the problem itself: violence, children, behavior, and abuse. Yet, the specific mechanisms that might explain how abuse leads to aggression are missing from the top keywords. Concepts that scientists know are crucial, such as a child's ability to stop themselves from acting on impulse, their language skills, and the quality of their daily interactions with caregivers, do not appear as central themes in the literature. Furthermore, the research leans heavily toward describing the problem rather than solving it. There is a distinct lack of studies focused on intervention or prevention strategies in the most common keywords. The field is better at documenting the connection between maltreatment and aggression than it is at testing ways to break that cycle.
The study also reveals that the research is not evenly spread across all ages of early childhood. The literature is heavily weighted toward preschoolers, the children aged three to six, while the experiences of infants and toddlers are less represented. This leaves a gap in understanding how these dynamics play out in the earliest years of life. The researchers conclude that while the field has grown and established a core understanding of the family context, the two traditions of studying aggression and maltreatment have not fully integrated. The map shows a landscape where the main roads are well-traveled, but many important side paths remain unexplored. To truly understand why some children continue to hit and push while others do not, future research will need to cross the boundaries between these disciplines, look more closely at the specific skills children are missing, and expand its reach to include voices and data from around the world.
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