Violence breeds violence: Childhood exposure and adolescent conduct problems

Abstract

The relationships between childhood exposure to violence and adolescent conduct problems were investigated in a sample of 88 primiparous adolescent mothers and their children. Regression analyses revealed that witnessing violence and victimization prior to age 10 predicted delinquency and violent behaviors, even after controlling for prenatal maternal and early childhood externalizing problems. Social competency and depression during middle childhood moderated the relationship between victimization and violent behaviors for girls, but not boys: Lower levels of social competency and depression served as risk factors for delinquency among teenage girls who experienced victimization during childhood. These findings have important implications for youth violence prevention programs.Exposure to violence has been consistently linked to antisocial behavior among youth. For example, violence victimization was found to be the single best predictor of juvenile violent behaviors for both boys and girls in a nationally representative sample of adolescents (Blum, Ireland, & Blum, 2003). Among urban Black adolescents, retrospective reports of witnessing violence and victimization were the strongest predictors of current use of violence, such as involvement in fights and the carrying of weapons (Durant, Cadenhead, Pendergrast, Slavens, & Linder, 1994). Relatedly, Jenkins and Bell (1994) indicated that weapon carrying is often done out of a fear of victimization rather than a violent or malicious intent. Research is needed to identify the factors that precipitate, protect against, and exacerbate adolescent conduct problems so that successful preventive efforts may be developed and implemented. The current study investigated the effects of childhood exposure to violence on adolescent conduct problems among children of adolescent mothers.Violence exposure occurring specifically in the home, school, or community has been associated with the development of conduct problems in children. For example, Flannery, Singer, Williams, and Castro (1998) found that violent behavior among adolescents who were exposed to high levels of home violence was three times higher for girls and two times higher for boys when compared with adolescents from low-violence homes. In a longitudinal study of inner city males, histories of maltreatment predicted higher levels of persistent serious delinquency over 6 years (between the ages of 8 and 12), even after controlling for family and demographic factors (Stouthamer-Loeber, Wei, Homish, & Loeber, 2002). Likewise, exposure to violence at school has been associated with concurrent violent behaviors as well as psychological trauma (Flannery, Wester, & Singer, 2004). Furthermore, witnessing of, and victimization from, community-based violence were found to contribute to the development of conduct problems over one year in a high-risk sample of urban adolescents, even after controlling for baseline levels of antisocial behavior (Pearce, Jones, Schwab-Stone, & Ruchkin, 2003). In addition to the local...

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“…It may not be the PTSD of the mother per se, but the family violence experienced by the mother, that increases the risk for both, the PTSD in the mother and the exposure to family violence in the child. This would support the notion of a Cycle of Violence and fit with results of a series of other studies [52,[55][56][57]. The social learning process was assumed to represent the mechanisms behind this association [58].…”

“…Our study indicated an association of children's mental health status and their experienced amount of maternal violence at home. Likewise, a number of studies identified psychological consequences of family violence for the children, such as anxiety [49,50], antisocial behaviour [21,51], aggression [52], and depression [51]. The explicit negative psychological consequences of family violence for a child may be explained not only by the experience of a frightening situation in an intimate familial environment but also by the absence of an adequate reaction from the parent Figure 6 Scatter plot and Pearson correlation coefficient for children's experienced maternal violence at home (sum score of event types) and family violence experienced by the mother during her own childhood (sum score of event types).…”

Moral vs. non-moral attribution in adolescence: Environmental and behavioural correlates

“…A large amount of research has shown that a high level of exposure to community violence during childhood and adolescence promotes negative effects on child adjustment (see Lynch, 2003, for a review), mostly increasing aggressive behaviours and externalizing symptoms (Barkin, Kreiter, & DuRant, 2001;Weaver, Borkowski, & Whitman, 2008). These effects appear to be particularly strong during adolescence because adolescents appear to be more sensitive to environmental and peer influences (Dodge & Pettit, 2003), and the company of deviant peers is considered one of the most influential factors associated with antisocial behaviour in adolescence (Dodge, Dishion, & Lansford, 2006).…”

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“…Victimization and Exposure to Violence Victimization and exposure to violence are common phenomena (Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, 2009) and are positively associated with a range of problematic outcomes, including future violent offending, for mainstream youth and for youth involved in the juvenile justice system (Aisenberg & Herrenkohl, 2008;Cuevas, Finkelhor, Turner, & Ormrod, 2007;Esbensen, Peterson, Taylor, & Freng, 2010;Hanson et al, 2008;Nofziger & Kurtz, 2005;Weaver, Borkowski, & Whitman, 2007; but see Schreck, Stewart, & Osgood, 2008). Youth in the juvenile justice system who have experienced victimization and exposure to violence are at greater risk of problems such as substance abuse, post-traumatic stress symptoms, suicidal ideation, and conduct problems (Ford, Hartman, Hawke, & Chapman, 2008;Nofziger & Kurtz, 2005;Coleman, 2005), relative to the general population of youth and to non-exposed delinquent peers.…”