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The Relationship Between Parents’ Intimate Partner Victimization and Youths’ Adolescent Relationship Abuse

  • Empirical Research
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Abstract

Witnessing inter-parental intimate partner violence has been found to be associated with adolescents’ own relationship abuse. This study investigates the relationship between patterns of inter-parental intimate partner verbal and physical violence victimization reported by parents and their children’s reports of dating abuse experiences and behavior. Latent class analysis was performed on a sample of 610 parents (42% male and 67% white) and their dating adolescent children (ages 12–21 years; 52% male). Parents reported five types of victimization by their partners in the past year, while youth concurrently reported their own victimization and perpetration within their dating relationships. Three profiles of parents’ intimate partner victimization were related to youth relationship abuse experiences and behaviors. Children of parents who experienced verbal abuse were more likely to experience similar patterns in their own relationships, whereas children of parents who report physical and verbal abuse were more likely to report psychological, physical and sexual abusive encounters in their partnerships. Findings indicate that parents’ relationship quality and abusive behaviors may have a long lasting effect on their children as they enter mid and late adolescence. Parents should pay attention to their own relationship quality and behavior even as their teen-age children gain independence.

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Acknowledgements

Points of views in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice or any other organization. Within NORC, we would like to thank our Research Assistant, Maria Bohri. A special thanks to the study respondents for their willingness to participate in our study, the time they spent on our project and the trust they showed in our research team.

Authors’ Contributions

Mumford and Taylor conceived of the overall STRiV study, participated in its design and oversaw data collection. Liu joined the team after the first two waves of data collection were complete, but contributed to the design of the later longitudinal data collection, including the Wave 3 data used in this paper. Liu led the design and writing of this manuscript and conducted the statistical analysis. Mumford and Taylor contributed to the refinement of the research questions and the interpretation of the data. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript. All authors read and approved each draft and the final manuscript.

Funding

Grant No. NIJ 2014-VA-CX-0065 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Health Research, NORC at the University of Chicago, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Weiwei Liu, Elizabeth A. Mumford & Bruce G. Taylor

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  1. Weiwei Liu
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Correspondence to Weiwei Liu.

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All procedures performed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the IRB at NORC at the University of Chicago and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards

Informed Consent

Informed consent was confirmed from all parent respondents and youth respondents who were age 18 at the time of the wave 1, 2, or 3 interview. Informed assent was confirmed for all youth respondents under age 18 at all three waves.

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Liu, W., Mumford, E.A. & Taylor, B.G. The Relationship Between Parents’ Intimate Partner Victimization and Youths’ Adolescent Relationship Abuse. J Youth Adolescence 47, 321–333 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0733-1

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