The Association between Adolescents' Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence and Behavioral Problems: An Examination of the Form of Violence and Gender Differences

Background and Purpose: Intimate partner violence (IPV) impacts a great number of children in the United States, and children are at heightened risk of experiencing behavioral problems after being exposed to IPV. Despite the well-established link between exposure to IPV and adolescent behavioral problems, little is known about the distinct effects of different forms of IPV on adolescents’ behavioral problems, as well as potential gender differences. To fill these critical knowledge gaps, the present study aims to examine the net effect of exposure to different forms of IPV in childhood on adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems.

Methods: This study used data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study. The analytic sample was 1,788 adolescents, including 917 boys and 871 girls. Adolescents’ exposure to IPV was repeatedly measured when they were ages 1, 3, 5, and 9, based on maternal reports of the occurrence of physical, psychological, and sexual IPV, and economic abuse in the past year. The dependent variables were adolescents’ broad-band internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, anxious/depressive symptoms, withdrawn symptoms, aggressive behavior, and rule-breaking behavior based on the caregiver-reported Child Behavioral Checklist. The six dependent variables had satisfactory reliability in this study (Cronbach’s alphas: 0.70 to 0.88). Sex-stratified multiple regression was conducted to examine the association between children’s exposure to different forms of IPV and their behavioral outcomes, controlling for maternal race/ethnicity, age at baseline, the highest level of education, and poverty.

Results: For boys, exposure to physical IPV was positively associated with anxious/depressive symptoms, exposure to psychological IPV was positively associated with rule-breaking behavior, and exposure to economic abuse was positively associated with externalizing behavior and aggressive behavior, after accounting for all control variables. For girls, exposure to psychological IPV was positively associated with five out of six measured behavioral outcomes, except anxious/depressive symptoms, and exposure to sexual IPV was positively associated with both internalizing problems and anxious/depressive symptoms, after accounting for all control variables.

Conclusions and Implications: The present study is one of few studies that specifically investigated the net effect of exposure to different forms of IPV on adolescents’ behavioral outcomes by gender. The findings suggest that different forms of IPV had distinct effects on behavioral problems in boys and girls. Importantly, using a nationally longitudinal dataset, this study further revealed the associations examined in a long-term perspective. Although the findings should be interpreted in light of several limitations, they point to the necessity of considering the forms of IPV and adolescents’ gender when examining the relation between exposure to IPV and child outcomes. Practitioners should offer tailored services that consider adolescents’ gender and the specific forms of IPV to which they were exposed when working with adolescents and families impacted by IPV.