Physical intimate partner violence in India: how much does childhood socialisation matter?

ABSTRACT

While a large number of studies assumed gendered socialisation leads to partner abuse, little evidence exists for India. We bridge this crucial gap by exploring the pathways between childhood socialisation and intimate partner violence, using data from ‘Youth in India: Situation and Need Study (2006–2007)’ for 5573 young married men (15–29 years). Nearly 17 per cent of men inflicted physical IPV in the past 12 months. Seventy-seven per cent recognized the experience of gender discrimination in their family and reported exposure to violence in two ways—one-third witnessed fathers abusing their mothers and 48 per cent were beaten by their parents. Adverse childhood experiences were associated with IPV perpetration. The structural equation model indicated significant pathways between IPV and childhood socialisation in the forms of experienced violence and gender discrimination. Findings underscore the importance of a violence-free, gender-neutral family environment for young generations and call for a comprehensive policy to ameliorate the impacts of IPV.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical intimate partner violence
• socialisation
• discrimination
• gender attitude
• structural equation modelling
• India

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of the paper was presented at the Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting, Austin, TX, USA during April 10–13, 2019 (winner of a Best Poster Award). The first author acknowledges the financial support received from The GENDER Project (Gender Equity and Demographic Research), a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded (BMGF Grant OPP1179208) collaborative research project between the Center on Gender Equity and Health, UC San Diego and the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, to attend the conference. The third author benefited from facilities and resources provided by the California Center for Population Research at UCLA (CCPR), which receives core support (P2C-HD041022) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). We are thankful to Dr. Lotus McDougal, Project Scientist, Centre on Gender Equity and Health, Dept. of Medicine, University of California, San Diego for her comments and suggestions on the manuscript. We also thankfully acknowledge the inputs from Dr. Aparajita Chattopadhyay, Professor, Department of Developmental Studies, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai India.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).