According to a new study, teens that share a violent relationship with their parents end up replicating the behaviour in their romantic relationships as well.
A new study has found that when teens share a violent relationship with their parents, this violence reflects in their romantic and dating relationships as well.
"It is true that if you grow up in a violent household you have a higher likelihood of being in a violent relationship," said Brenda Lohman, lead author and an associate professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State University.
The violence need not be only physical, but can be psychological as well. New research focusing on psychological violence rather than physical violence found that psychological violence between a parent and a child affects a child more than a child witnessing violence between two adults in the home.
"If the parent is more aggressive toward the child, the child is more likely to be in relationships where they're being victimized or perpetrating violence against their partner a few years or even a decade later," Lohman said.
Researchers found family stress, both emotional and financial, during adolescence is another predictor of intimate partner violence, but only when people are in their late 20s or early 30s, not during the teen years. Tricia Neppl, coauthor and an assistant professor in human development and family studies, said there could be several reasons why. It could be that people are more stable in their relationships or the fact that they have children.
"For whatever reason, the family stress that you experienced in early adolescence is having some kind of a lasting effect on your role as you settle into adulthood," Neppl said. "And more so than emerging adulthood, or your early 20s, when you're still trying to figure out what those roles are, you're young and you may or may not have children yet."
This study was part of a special series of articles on teen dating violence, guest edited by Lohman for the April issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
