Bullying - what causes this?

I did not experience bullying but I think it has to do with how we bring up our children. If we teach our children to respect and love other people most probably, they wont end up bullying others. In other cases, peer influence plays a significant role when it comes to bullying.

There are many cases of poor self esteem. The only way they feel in their minds that they can fix it is to rather push around, bully other children. And the bullies may have been once the bullied themselves. This to me just proves that bullying is just one vicious cycle, where it might be not as hard to start to say the very least. And the fact that there has only been awareness about the effects of bullying in recent years, where it had just been previously mostly brushed aside as children being children, unless it was a rather serious situation. And plus their home life, I hate to say this, might be less than ideal. It could be some kind of twisted coping mechanism to really deal with a less than ideal situation at home. As much as the bullied should be pity, sadly, the bullies do have their own twisted history that have shaped them the way it is. There are a lot of times where they might seem strong on the surface, but there is some kind of past weakness. Granted some people are just jerks, sadly it is sometimes that simple.

Yeah, i agree with mauve02, it is quite psychological in nature, usually those children who have problems at home, being hurt physically and emotionally or sometimes influenced by friends. my son was bullied at school and i went to see the kid who bullied him. after talking to him, i realized how domestic problems really affected his behavior in school.