Research articleChild Maltreatment, Youth Violence, and Intimate Partner Violence: Developmental Relationships
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.
Section snippets
Conceptual Framework
This study examined two relationships: the relationship among child maltreatment, youth violence perpetration, and IPV perpetration (perpetration link), and the relationship between child maltreatment, youth violence victimization, and IPV victimization (victimization link). Based on previous literature, this study posited that three types of child maltreatment (neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse), family background factors, adolescent individual demographic factors, and adolescent
Results
Rates (in proportion forms) with 95% confidence intervals for all dichotomous variables and means with standard deviations for all continuous variables are presented in Table 2. All statistics listed in Table 2 and all of the following analyses used sample weights to adjust for stratification and over-sampling of under-represented groups. After the adjustment of sample weights, the study sample had very similar gender and racial/ethnic distributions to the nation. Table 2 shows a larger
Discussion
Using a U.S. nationally representative sample, the present results demonstrate that, in general, victims of child maltreatment are more likely to perpetrate future violence in the form of youth violence and IPV, while there is less of an effect of child maltreatment on future victimization of youth violence or IPV. These findings reinforce the commonly held views that preventing child maltreatment may be key to preventing the perpetration of youth violence, and that interventions targeting
References (47)
- et al.
A developmental psychopathology perspective on child abuse and neglect
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(1995) - et al.
Physical punishment/maltreatment during childhood and adjustment in young adulthood
Child Abuse Negl
(1997) Sex differences in physically aggressive acts between heterosexual partners: a meta-analytical review
Aggression Violence Behav
(2002)- et al.
Efficacy of a dating violence prevention program on attitudes justifying aggression
J Adolesc Health
(1997) - et al.
The effect of childhood physical and sexual abuse on adolescent weapon carrying
J Adolesc Health
(2007) - et al.
The relationship of adult health status to childhood abuse and household dysfunction
Am J Prev Med
(1998) Web-based injury statistics query and reporting system (WISQARS)
(2006)Costs of intimate partner violence against women in the United States
(2003)- et al.
Childhood sexual abuse: long-term sequelae and implications for psychological assessment
J Interpers Violence
(1993) - et al.
Prospective family predictors of aggression toward female partners for at-risk young men
Dev Psychol
(1998)
Intergenerational transmission of partner violence: a 20-year prospective study
J Consult Clin Psychol
Developmental issues in the impact of child maltreatment on later delinquency and drug use
Criminology
Differential effects associated with self-reported histories of abuse and neglect in a college sample
J Interpers Violence
Developmental antecedents of partner abuse: a prospective-longitudinal study
J Abnorm Psychol
A test of various perspectives on the intergenerational transmission of domestic violence
Criminology
The relationship between childhood maltreatment and adolescent involvement in delinquency
Criminology
The intergenerational transmission of spouse abuse: a meta-analysis
J Marriage Fam
Family change, parental discord and early offending
J Abnorm Child Psychol
Intimate violence in families
Economic conditions, deterrence and juvenile crime: evidence from micro data
Am Law Econ Rev
Neighborhoods and violent crime: a multilevel study of collective efficacy
Science
Do disadvantaged neighborhoods cause well-adjusted children to become adolescent delinquents?A study of male juvenile serious offending, individual risk and protective factors, and neighborhood context
Criminology
The intergenerational transmission of aggression across three generations
J Fam Violence
Cited by (203)
Child Adult Relationship Enhancement in Primary Care (PriCARE) theory of change: A promising intervention to reduce child maltreatment
2024, Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health CarePsychopathic personality and criminal violence across the life-course in a prospective longitudinal study: Does psychopathic personality predict violence when controlling for other risk factors?
2022, Journal of Criminal JusticeCitation Excerpt :Add Health started in 1994 and the first wave (1994–1995) collected interview data from over 20, 000 young people, with follow-up interviews and questionnaires in 1996 (wave 2) and in 2001–2002 with over 15,000 participants (wave 3) (Bernat et al., 2012; Resnick, Ireland, & Borowsky, 2004). Analyses from waves 1–3 have been useful in establishing risk factors for violence, and these have found that factors such as health problems (including substance use), ADHD, access to weapons, mistreatment during childhood, school issues and attachment to school, and having antisocial peers are all important risk factors (Bernat et al., 2012; Fang & Corso, 2007; Resnick et al., 2004). As can be seen from just these three longitudinal studies, there are similarities in the factors that predict later violence.
Gender differences in the victim-offender overlap for dating violence: The role of early violent socialization
2022, Child Abuse and NeglectCheating amongst youth offenders: How peers and their social status influence cheating
2024, Economic Inquiry
The full text of this article is available via AJPM Online at www.ajpm-online.net; 1 unit of Category-1 CME credit is also available, with details on the website.