Considering emotional abuse in the link between spouse and child abuse (original) (raw)

The first section reviews the research literature relevant to the intergenerational transmission of partner and child abuse. The second section describes an exploratory study to examine the links between spouse and child abuse across generations. Participants were 97 assaulted women, over half of whose children (52%) had been abused by the current partner. Multiple regression examined the extent to which both partner's and the woman's having been abused or witnessing abuse was related to the current levels of physical and non-physical violence towards women. In predicting the levels of physical partner abuse based on whether the man was abused or witnessed violence as a child, only abuse as a child was significant (p=.03). Neither a man having been abused nor being a child witness was associated with Non-Physical Abuse towards women. The variables of whether the men were child witnesses or were abused as a child, current abuse towards partner, both physical and non-physical, were entered into a regression model to predict levels of current abuse of their own children. Neither childhood variable was significantly related to the current abuse of the children, however, both physical abuse (p=.02) and psychological abuse of women partners (p=.006) were. Implications of these results for research and practice are presented.