Elsevier

Child Abuse & Neglect

Volume 38, Issue 4, April 2014, Pages 664-676
Child Abuse & Neglect

Mutuality, severity, and chronicity of violence by Father-Only, Mother-Only, and mutually violent parents as reported by university students in 15 nations

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.10.004Get rights and content

Abstract

This article aims to provide a more complete description of the violence between parents experienced by children than is usual in research and to suggest the practicality and importance of doing so. It presents results on the percent of parents in each of three Dyadic Types: Father-Only (the father assaulted the mother and the mother did not assault), Mother-Only (mother assaulted and the father did not assault), and Both-Assault; and on differences between these three types in the chronicity and severity of assaults. Questionnaires were completed by convenience samples of university students in 15 nations (N = 11,408). Violence between parents was measured by the short form of the Conflict Tactics Scales. Fourteen percent of the students reported one or more instances of physical violence between their parents, including 6% who reported a severe assault. Cross classification of assaults by the father and the mother to identify Dyadic Types found 25% Father-Only, 22% Mother-Only, and 52% Both-Assaulted. The percentage in each Dyadic Type based on reports by male or female students were similar. They were also consistent with percentages found by previous studies identifying the Dyadic Types of violent couples. In respect to chronicity, when violence between parents occurred, in 82% of the cases, it occurred more than once. Research on children experiencing violence between parents, and prevention and treatment of inter-parental violence, are likely to be enhanced if it takes into account that Both-Violent is the most frequent pattern to which children are exposed and that Mother-Only is about as frequent as Father-Only. Consideration of the severity, and chronicity, of the inter-parental violence needs to replace simply classifying parents as violent. Achieving this is possible using instruments which take only three to five minutes and which can be completed by only one of the parents or by the child.

Section snippets

Importance of dyadic measurement of inter-parental violence

Identifying whether the child was exposed to violence by both parents, or by only one, whether it was the father or mother, needs to be taken into account in theories about the effects of exposure to parental violence and in prevention and treatment efforts. Yet, as was mentioned, few studies obtain this information, and it is virtually absent from the theoretical and clinical literature. Therefore, one objective of this article was to give the phenomenon a convenient name (DT), identify

Severity and chronicity

Although an essential first step is to determine if the aggression is Father-Only, Mother-Only, or Both-Assault, as previously noted, information about other characteristics of the inter-parental violence are important and often mentioned but rarely empirically investigated. For this study, we investigated the severity and the chronicity of the assaults perpetrated by parents in each DT. Chronicity is the frequency of assault among those who assault.

A study which did distinguish between severe

Studies of children's exposure to dyadic perpetration types

Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al. (2012) identified 48 studies which reported the percent of couples in each of the three categories of DTs. None used the term Dyadic Type because it only recently appeared in the literature. Few were studies in which the issue of interest was whether the child was exposed to inter-parental violence. However, we located seven with this focus. They provided 11 distributions of DTs. The column headed Father-Only in Table 1 indicates that the percentage in this dyadic

Research questions

For the reasons given in the introduction to this article, we believe there is a need for additional research to provide researchers and practitioners with basic descriptive information about the prevalence of the three DTs and the severity and frequency of violence which characterizes each of the types. An article now in preparation will provide additional information on the extent to which these three aspects of exposure to inter-parental violence have different effects on children. The

Method

The data for this study were obtained as part of the International Parenting Study (IPS) conducted by a consortium of researchers located in 15 nations between October 2007 and March 2010. Each IPS consortium member used the same core questionnaire, except for the final section, which was for each member to add questions about issues of specific local or theoretical interest. A description of the study, including the questionnaire and all other key documents can be obtained at //pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2

Prevalence of assaults between parents

Entire sample. The first pair of rows of Table 3 is for the total sample. The upper row of the pair is for any assault regardless of severity. It shows that 3.5% of students reported their father had assaulted their mother when they were 10 years old, and 10% reported that the mother had assaulted their father that year. Combining these indicates violence in the relationship of the parents of at least 14% of the students in this study. This is remarkably close to the prevalence rate found by

Discussion

Most prior research on children exposed to violence between parents has focused exclusively on assaults by fathers. For example, Grip, Almqvist, Axberg, and Broberg (2013) defined partner violence as “self-reported behaviors directed to the mother by a current or former male partner” (p. 239). This study gives equal consideration to two other DTs: Mother-Only and Both-Assault. It did so by investigating the prevalence of physical assaults perpetrated by the mothers and the fathers of university

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    Revision of a paper presented at the International Family Violence and Child Victimization Research Conference, Sheraton Harborside Hotel, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, July 8–10, 2012. This article is one of a series reporting results of the International Parenting Study directed by Angele Fauchier [email protected], and the Dyadic Types Research Program. Papers can be downloaded from http://pubpages.unh.edu/∼mas2. The work was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grant T32MH15161, and the University of New Hampshire.

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