Breaking the Cycle of Child Maltreatment and Intimate Partner Violence: The Effects of Student Gender and Caring Relationships with Teachers

ABSTRACT

The prevalence of child maltreatment and its association with future violence makes identifying ways to intervene with victims and prevent subsequent violence increasingly important. Child maltreatment is any form of child abuse or child neglect resulting in actual or potential harm to a child’s health, survival, development or dignity. Self-reported data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were used to further understanding of a commonly described cycle of interpersonal violence where the experience of childhood maltreatment predicts victimization and perpetration of youth violence in adolescence and intimate partner violence in adulthood. Using a nationally representative sample, we examine how both gender and the experience of caring relationships with teachers could affect the cycle. Physical abuse was associated with youth violence victimization and perpetration, and neglect was associated with youth violence victimization. Youth violence victimization was related to IPV perpetration and victimization. For males, youth violence perpetration was associated with only IPV victimization, while for females, youth violence perpetration was associated with IPV perpetration and victimization. For males with low perceptions of having a caring teacher, youth violence victimization and perpetration were strongly correlated. Implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Child maltreatment
• intimate partner violence
• perpetrators
• teacher relationships
• victimization
• youth violence

Acknowledgments

Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations.