Examining the Role of Affect Regulation in the Intergenerational Transmission of Family Violence

Background and purpose: Violence within families is a serious social and public health concern in the United States. Nearly 4 million children and 12 million adults are the victims of violence perpetrated by a parent, spouse, or intimate partner each year. While interpersonal violence consistently attenuates with age, the effects of exposure to violence (victimization/perpetration) may persist across the lifecycle. Adolescent violence victims are uniquely vulnerable to impairment of self-regulation mechanisms that do not mature until early adulthood. Patterns of dysregulation of affect, such as mental disorders of anxiety and depression, that arise in adolescence often persist into adulthood. Impaired self-regulation capacity manifests not only as psychological dysfunction, but also in physical dysfunction, particularly stress physiology disorders such as hypertension, immune disorders, etc. Thus, exposure to interpersonal violence in adolescence may have long-term consequences psychologically, physically, and socially. Informed by a stress physiology framework, the current study examined the distal effect of adolescent physical child abuse victimization and exposure to interparental physical violence. Specifically, the study tested: (a) the relationship between a person’s exposure to family violence in adolescence and the likelihood he/she will be a perpetrator of intimate partner violence in adulthood, and (b) whether a person’s ability to regulate his/her affect influences this relationship

Methods:  The study utilized secondary data from a cohort of 15 year olds (n=335), a subset of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods longitudinal cohort study. The data were comprised of a stratified probability sample of seven ethnic/racial groups and three categories of socio-economic status to create a matrix of maximum diversity. The current study examined a direct and mediated path of the intergenerational transmission process with family violence exposed adolescents over three developmental stages. A structural equation modeling framework was utilized to test the direct effect by frequency and severity of two types of family violence, physical child abuse and exposure to interparental partner violence, and the mediation of this process by a psychological variable of affect regulation capacity, a proxy measure of psychophysiological stress regulation associated with impulsive violence perpetration, on outcome measures of young adult intimate partner violence perpetration and victimization.

Results: Affect regulation capacity was significantly correlated across all three waves of the study with young adult outcomes of minor and severe intimate partner violence perpetration and victimization (r=.17-.26), at a rate twice that of adolescent family violence exposure and young adult outcomes. Structural equation modeling indicated a very weak relationship between affect regulation capacity and subsequent intimate partner violence. Though weak, this relationship is not insignificant in that even a 2% predicted increase in intimate partner violence represents over 20,000 incidents of violence between intimate partners annually.

Conclusions and implications: The results of the study indicate a need for further research on the role of affect regulation in the continuity of interpersonal violence perpetration. The stress physiology framework may provide social work practitioners and policymakers with new intervention approaches to meet the needs of families currently experiencing or at risk for the intergenerational transmission of family violence.