The intergenerational transmission of family aggression (original) (raw)
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A Test of Various Perspectives on the Intergenerational Transmission of Domestic Violence*
1995
Past research indicates that adults who were subject to severe physical discipline as children are often violent toward their spouse and children as adults. This association is usually attributed to modeling or the learning of attitudes that legitimate hitting family members. Using four waves of data from a sample of midwestern families, this study found only limited support for these explanations. Analysis showed that the relationship between childhood exposure to harsh parenting and recurrent adult violence toward children or a spouse was mediated by the extent to which parents displayed an antisocial orientation. This pattern of findings is consistent with criminological theories that view criminal and deviant behavior of all sorts as rooted in a general antisocial orientation acquired in childhood largely as a result of ineffective parenting.
Journal of Family Violence, 2008
Literature suggests that early patterns of aggressive behavior in both girls and boys are predictive of later violent behavior, including violence that takes place within family contexts. Utilizing the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, a study of individuals recruited as children in the 1970s from inner-city schools in Montreal, this study examined different pathways whereby aggressive behavioral styles in childhood may place individuals at risk for continuing patterns of violence towards children and spouses. Childhood aggression directly predicted self-reported violence towards spouse for both sexes, with indirect routes through lowered educational attainment and marital separation. Aggression in childhood was also found to predict parents' self-reports of using violence with their children. For mothers, educational attainment and current absence of the biological father from the child's home also played important roles in predicting violent behavior towards offspring. These findings provide evidence of both continuity of aggressive behavior and indirect risk paths to family violence, via lower educational attainment and parental absence. In both men and women, childhood aggression may be an identifiable precursor of family violence and child abuse.
Psychology of Violence, 2012
Using the actor-partner interdependence model (Kenny, 1996), the current study is the first to examine: (1) the relation among 4 forms of family-of-origin aggression (FOA), namely, father-to-mother, mother-to-father, father-to-child, and mother-to-child aggression, and subsequent experience with physical intimate partner violence (IPV) at the couple level; and (2) the gender-specific intergenerational transmission hypothesis. Method: A representative sample of 453 married or cohabiting heterosexual couples from the U.S. northeast completed self-report measures of IPV and FOA as part of a larger study on family and relationship violence. Results: Although both individuals' (respondent effects) and partners' (partner effects) FOA histories generally predicted physical IPV victimization and perpetration, dual-FOA couples were not at increased risk for IPV. Respondents' interparental and partners' parent-to-child aggression experiences were most predictive of IPV. Gender-specific transmission of aggression across generations was only partially supported. Last, motherto-child aggression was a significant predictor in 3 of the 4 models. Conclusions: Findings support the intergenerational transmission of aggression (Widom, 1989) and social learning/cognitive (Bandura, 1977, 1997) theories, and suggest that both partners' IPV and FOA (which often includes multitype maltreatment) experiences should be assessed and considered when developing prevention and treatment programs. Violence prevention parent training programs are also discussed.
Intergenerational transmission of partner violence: A 20-year prospective study
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2003
An unselected sample of 543 children was followed over 20 years to test the independent effects of parenting, exposure to domestic violence between parents (ETDV), maltreatment, adolescent disruptive behavior disorders, and emerging adult substance abuse disorders (SUDs) on the risk of violence to and from an adult partner. Conduct disorder (CD) was the strongest risk for perpetrating partner violence for both sexes, followed by ETDV, and power assertive punishment. The effect of child abuse was attributable to these 3 risks. ETDV conferred the greatest risk of receiving partner violence; CD increased the odds of receiving partner violence but did not mediate this effect. Child physical abuse and CD in adolescence were strong independent risks for injury to a partner. SUD mediated the effect of adolescent CD on injury to a partner but not on injury by a partner. Prevention implications are highlighted.
2003
This investigation examined intergenerational continuities in both angry, aggressive parenting and also the angry, aggressive behavior of children and adolescents. Data from 75 G2 youth (26 men, 49 women, M = 22-years old), their mothers (G1), and their G3 children (47 boys, 28 girls, M = 2.4-years old) were included in the analyses. The prospective, longitudinal design of the study, which included observational and multiinformant measures, overcame many of the methodological limitations found in much of the earlier research on intergenerational transmission. The results demonstrated a direct connection between observed G1 aggressive parenting and observed G2 aggressive parenting from 5 to 7 years later. G2 aggressive behavior as an adolescent and G3 aggressive behavior as a child were related to parenting behavior but not directly to one another. The results were consistent with a social learning perspective on intergenerational continuities in angry and aggressive behaviors. of this research. We then turn to a description of the present investigation and discuss how its design overcomes some of the significant methodological shortcomings of previous studies. Finally, we describe a social learning framework for understanding intergenerational continuities that guided the data analyses in this report.
Differentiating patterns of aggression in the family
Journal of Aggression …, 2010
The feasibility and prevalence of reciprocal, hierarchical and paternal patterns of family aggression hypothesised by Dixon and Browne (2003) were explored within a sample of maltreating families. The psychological reports of 67 families referred to services for ...
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 1995
The relationship between contemporary household family structures at fourth-grade and sixth-grade parent-and teacher-rated aggression was examined in an epidemiologically defined population of urban school children. The relationship between family structure and aggression varied by child gender and by parent and teacher ratings in the home and school, respective(y. After taking into account fam@ income, urban area, and fourth-grade aggressive behavior, boys in both mother-father and mother-male partner families were significantly less likely than boys in mother-alone families to be rated as aggressive by teachers. No significant relations between family structure and teacher-or parent-rated aggression were found for girls. Significant attention in the media and the research community is being focussed on the growing rate of single-mother families in the U.S. (Bumpass, 1990; McLanahan & Garfinkel, 1989; Whitehead, 1993). In 1990, over 23 percent of U.S. families with children under the age of 18 were headed by single mothers (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992). Moreover, approximately half of American children will spend some of their lives in a sin
Interdisciplinary Journal of Family Studies, 2012
The origin of violent behaviour is to be sought in the primary relationships of the individual. From early childhood, the affective relationships that involve the child, in other words those between the parents and with parents, influence a child’s capacity to regulate his or her emotions, expectations of the outside world, and behavior, as well as his or her ideas about interpersonal relationships in general. Growing up in a violent family is significantly correlated with violent behaviour towards one’s spouse and children in adulthood, both in the case in which a child has suffered abuse and when he or she is merely a witness. The authors agree that in some cases what a child learns in these families regards the legitimacy of violence, its efficacy or its validity as a strategy for problem solving.
Examining Intergenerational Violence: Violent Role Modeling or Weak Parental Controls?
Violence and Victims, 2003
Family violence research has uncovered a positive relationship between parental violence and children’s later involvement in intimate violence. In a similar vein, criminology’s social control theory suggests that weak or absent parental controls are associated with a variety of delinquent acts. Little research, however, investigates the link between parental violence, parental controls, and dating violence. This article asks two research questions: How is interparental violence associated with parent-child attachments, monitoring, adolescent dating, attitudes toward violence, and dating violence? And second, are there independent and interactive effects of inter-parental violence, and parental controls on dating violence offending and attitudes towards violence? Dating violence offending is significantly associated with witnessed inter-parental violence, high dating frequency, and low parental monitoring. Attitudes towards violence are associated with witnessed inter-parental violen...