Examining intergenerational violence: violent role modeling or weak parental controls?
Family violence research has uncovered a positive relationship between parental violence and children's later involvement in intimate violence. In a similar vein, criminology's social control theory suggests that weak or absent parental controls are associated with a variety of delinquent acts. Little research, however, investigates the link between parental violence, parental controls, and dating violence. This article asks two research questions: How is inter-parental violence associated with parent-child attachments, monitoring, adolescent dating, attitudes toward violence, and dating violence? And second, are there independent and interactive effects of inter-parental violence, and parental controls on dating violence offending and attitudes towards violence? Dating violence offending is significantly associated with witnessed inter-parental violence, high dating frequency, and low parental monitoring. Attitudes towards violence are associated with witnessed inter-parental violence, lower parental attachment, and the interaction of witnessed inter-parental violence and parental attachment. The implications for role modeling and social control theory are discussed.
Chapple
Constance L
CL
Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588-0324, USA. cchapple2@unl.edu
D000293:Adolescent; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology; D017579:Domestic Violence / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016901:Intergenerational Relations / Q000208:ethnology; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations / Q000208:ethnology; D016487:Parenting / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D012927:Social Control, Informal