Intergenerational Transmission of Violence

The notion that family violence persists across generations is pervasive among clinicians, researchers, and the general public. Although many people expect consistent intergenerational transmission of violence (ITV), many scholars have questioned the supposed inevitability of transmission. Phenomena such as partner violence and child abuse clearly lead to myriad negative outcomes for many victims, including subsequent victimization due to involvement in relationships with violent partners, as well as perpetration of violence toward others, including partners and children. Estimates of the likelihood of ITV across generations vary widely, and researchers have found several risk and protective factors that alter the rates of transmission. Ultimately, the majority of people exposed to family violence during childhood are not involved in partner violence or child abuse as adults.

Transmission of family violence across generations may occur via several mechanisms. Social learning theory indicates that children learn to be perpetrators and/or victims of violence through exposure to their parents' expressions of violence. According to attachment theory, child abuse leads to insecure attachment between parents and children; changes in the child's internal working model result in later relationship difficulties and inadequate care for one's own children. Another possible explanation is that family violence during childhood results in increased stress and negative life events; during adulthood, high stress and limited resources lead people to use violence. Assortative mating suggests that people select mates similar to themselves, increasing the risk of becoming involved in partner violence for people who are already predisposed. Some researchers point to features with genetic components shared by parents and children that predispose both to family violence, such as antisocial traits, alcoholism, and impulsivity. Some traits shared by parents and children may not be passed genetically but instead may be learned during childhood, such as violence approval, poor emotion regulation, deficits in social information processing, and hostile attributions about interpersonal relationships.

ITV research typically employs one of three methodologies, with inclusion of control samples varying among studies. First, many researchers examine the [Page 359]rates of violence in the childhoods of adults currently involved in family violence as perpetrators or victims. Alternatively, researchers begin with a sample of adults who experienced violence in their families of origin, then investigate rates of family violence during adulthood. Less commonly, researchers take a sample of children with varying family violence histories and follow them into adulthood. This latter prospective approach avoids reliance on retrospective recall of participants, which can be prone to error and bias. However, prospective studies are costly in terms of money, time, and researcher effort. Typically, retrospective studies result in higher estimates of transmission rates than prospective studies. Use of self-report measures produces much higher rates of violence than reliance on substantiation by government agencies, which can result in large variations in transmission rates.

Joan Kaufman and Edward Zigler illustrated how the same transmission data can be presented in different ways, resulting in substantially different estimates of transmission. For example, using parents' abuse histories as the starting point, a 1979 study by Rosemary Hunter and Nancy Kilstrom found an 18% rate of transmission; that is, of parents with an abuse history, only 18% abused their own infants. If current abuse had been the starting point instead, these same data would have shown a 90% transmission rate because 9 of the 10 parents currently abusing their infants had been maltreated as children.

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