The Situational Context of Dating Violence

Abstract

Studies have examined intimate violence between spouses (or stable or semistable common-law relationships) and adolescents involved in conventional courtship and dating relationships. Many of these studies, along with what has been presented in previous chapters here, have identified the etiology of partner violence as embedded in socially structured gender inequalities that emerge in these relationships (McFarlane et al. 2004; Miller and White 2003; Watts and Zimmerman 2002; Amaro 1995). Limited attention, however, has been paid to adolescent delinquints involved in less clearly defined and short-term dating relationships living in economically marginalized urban communities, as is the case with the studied population.