Child Maltreatment, Youth Violence, and Intimate Partner Violence

Background

Understanding the cycle of violence, from victimization to perpetration across the life span, is critical for designing successful prevention interventions. This study uses a nationally representative sample to examine the developmental relationships among three forms of child maltreatment, youth violence perpetration or victimization, and young adult intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration or victimization.

Methods

Data describing self-reported youth violence perpetration (or victimization) from Wave I of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (1994–1995) were matched with self-reported IPV perpetration (or victimization) in young adult sexual relationships and retrospective reports of child maltreatment collected during Wave III (2001–2002). Bivariate probit regression models were used to analyze the developmental relationships between child maltreatment, youth violence, and IPV. Analyses were completed in September 2006.

Results

Compared to nonvictims of child maltreatment, victims of child maltreatment are more likely to perpetrate youth violence (a likelihood increase ranging from −1.2% to 6.6% for females and 3.7% to 11.9% for males) and young adult IPV (an increase from 8.7% to 10.4% for females and from 1.3% to 17.2% for males), although the direct and indirect effects vary by type of child maltreatment experienced. Gender differences exist in the links between child maltreatment, youth violence and IPV, and in the effects of socioeconomic factors on youth violence and IPV.

Conclusions

Results suggest that it may be important to account for gender differences when designing violence prevention programs, and an integrative approach is critical for stopping the developmental trajectory of violence.

Introduction

The incidence and economic burden of violence is a national problem affecting millions of people each year in the United States.1, 2 Violence can occur during childhood or adulthood and can be perpetrated by oneself, acquaintances, or strangers. Understanding the cycle of violence, from victimization to perpetration across the life span, is critical for designing successful prevention interventions. Research in this area has suggested that the victims of child maltreatment are at increased risk of perpetrating violence as well as being victims of violence as youths and during adulthood.3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 However, while connections among child maltreatment, youth violence, and intimate partner violence (IPV) have been documented, there are a number of issues requiring further examination.

First, a majority of studies examining the developmental trajectories of violence have failed to adequately control for confounding individual socioeconomic, family background, and contextual factors. Evidence has suggested that child maltreatment, youth violence, and IPV are not uniformly distributed across the population and are more likely to occur in families characterized by social and economic disadvantage, parental separation and divorce, and families living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 Without controlling for these factors, it is not clear whether the link among child maltreatment, youth violence, and IPV arises because of the socioeconomic and family context within which the violence occurs, or due to a cause-and-effect relationship in which experiencing child maltreatment increases the risk for later youth violence perpetration or victimization and/or IPV perpetration or victimization. Second, many studies in this field, especially in the area of IPV, have been based on relatively small or selected samples such as clinical and agency samples rather than general population samples. This limits the generalizability of their findings.

Third, researchers have suggested that developmental trajectories of violence may operate differently for males and females.10, 13, 19, 20 However, for the few studies that have investigated gender differences, especially those studying the gender differences in the link between child maltreatment and IPV, the findings are inconsistent. For example, Magdol et al.¹⁰ found that the link between abusive discipline experienced as a child and IPV perpetration was stronger for females, while Doumas et al.¹⁹ and Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al.²⁰ found that abused boys are at higher risk for perpetrating partner violence as adults. The differences in findings could be due to different specificities of the samples used in the studies. The samples used in both of the latter studies were small and selected in the U.S., which may suffer from sample selection biases. The sample for the study by Magdol et al.¹⁰ was an unselected birth cohort born in Dunedin, New Zealand. Besides sample differences, research design and measurement problems are common in studies on the relationship between child maltreatment and later violent behaviors, and these problems may also explain, in part, why results differ.21, 22

Finally, it is important that research on developmental trajectories of violence from child maltreatment victimization to the victimization or perpetration of IPV, should explore whether youth violence perpetration mediates the effect of child maltreatment on IPV perpetration, or whether youth violence victimization mediates the effect of child maltreatment on IPV victimization. Studies linking child maltreatment and IPV have typically not included measures of youth violence, so it is unclear whether risk for IPV perpetration or victimization is a direct consequence of a history of child maltreatment or whether child maltreatment is really a marker for some other, more direct causal variable such as youth violence perpetration or victimization. Antisocial behavior theory proposes that child maltreatment might increase the risk for IPV perpetration through first promoting violent behavior in adolescence, with the aggressive behavior being carried through to adulthood and used against intimate partners.4, 11, 23 When applied to the link between child maltreatment and IPV victimization, learned helplessness theory suggests that exposure to child maltreatment may leave children with a sense of learned helplessness so that they do not develop appropriate skills to escape the violence in adolescence, which, in turn, increases the risk for later IPV victimization.24, 25 These theories suggest that, for the connection between child maltreatment and IPV perpetration or victimization, it is important to consider whether youth violence perpetration or victimization plays a role in mediating the impact of child maltreatment on IPV perpetration or victimization.

This study used a U.S. longitudinal and nationally representative sample to examine the direct relationships among three forms of child maltreatment (neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse), youth violence perpetration or victimization, and young adult IPV perpetration or victimization. This study expanded the authors’ previous work that examined the link between child maltreatment and IPV perpetration with different outcome measures of IPV perpetration.²⁶ This study further examined the indirect effects that child maltreatment has on future IPV perpetration or victimization through the presence of youth violence perpetration or victimization. Finally, this study assessed the impact of gender on these direct and indirect effects, and the role that socioeconomic factors play in the occurrence of violence.