Teens' Views on Good Parental Communication and Its Relationship to Teen's Experiences with Dating Violence

Background and Purpose:  Teen dating violence (TDV) is recognized as a significant public health problem.  Research on the context of teens experiencing TDV is just beginning to focus on family circumstances.  We know very little about how teens would like their parents to respond if they tell them about an incident of TDV.  TDV victims are likely to turn to peers for help or to keep the situation private.  However, several studies suggest that adolescents still value parents' views and seek their assistance.  Parents can play key roles in prevention of teen risk behaviors because of their influence in forming teens’ values, but they may have difficulties responding effectively to TDV.  One of the next steps in TDV prevention is to increase the effectiveness of messages to parents.  This study asks how teens' communication with parents relates to TDV incidence and how teens would like parents to respond to TDV.

Methods

Upon IRB approval, 53 youth were recruited through community agencies in the American southwest. Youth completed surveys about how they want their parents to respond to incidences of TDV, the Parent Adolescent Communication Scale (PACS) (Barnes & Olson, 1982) and the Conflict Tactics Scale about their actual experiences (victimization and perpetration) with TDV (Neidig, 1986; Straus 1979).  The average age of participants was 14.13 years old, and they were split between males (n=25; 47.2%) and females (n=28; 52.8%). Over half of the youth self-identified as Latino. 

Results

Of five possible ways parents might respond after being told that their adolescent had been hurt by a dating partner, the respondents reported that the most helpful and likely parental response would be to say "S/He does not have the right to hit you.  No one has the right to control you or what you do".  The second most helpful and likely response was to say “The abuse is not your fault. You are not to blame; no matter how guilty the person doing this to you is trying to make you feel. Your partner should not be doing this to you.” The least desirable and least likely response was “If you keep seeing him/ her, I’ll ground you for two weeks.” The next to the worst and least likely response was to express disapproval of the relationship.  

There was a significant negative correlation between the level of openness of teen's reported communication with their mothers on the PACS and TDV victimization (r=-.479, p.007, n=30) and perpetration (r=-.486, p.006, n=30) shown on the CTS.  There were no significant correlations between TDV experiences and respondents' level of openness of communication with their fathers.   

Conclusions and Implications:  Findings suggest that teens’ level of communication openness with their mothers is related to how much TDV youth experience.  Additionally, teens' evaluations of potential parental responses to learning of TDV show that authoritarian actions were considered less desirable and less likely than verbal expressions of support for the teen victim.  This study contributes to TDV prevention with potential messages that can be adopted by parents.