Citation

Murphy CM, Blumenthal DR. Pers. Relatsh. 2000; 7(2): 203-218.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.tb00012.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Intergenerational patterns of relationship aggression have received considerable theoretical attention and empirical support. A developmental account of such effects suggests that childhood exposure to family violence leads to interpersonal problems that are subsequently manifested in aggressive dating relationships. The current study tested this hypothesis using structural equation modeling with data from a sample of female college students (N= 207). The theoretical model of interest, in which interpersonal problems with dominance, intrusiveness, and vindictiveness fully mediate the link between violence in the family of origin and participation in physically aggressive dating relationships, provided a very good fit to the data. This mediational model was preferable to alternative models that (a) included both direct and indirect influences of family-of-origin violence, (b) reversed the direction of effects by modeling interpersonal problems with dominance as a result of intimate partner aggression; and (c) modeled interpersonal problems with submissiveness as mediating intergenerational violence patterns. The findings implicate interpersonal problems with dominance as an important mediating factor in the developmental pathway linking family-of-origin violence to intimate partner violence in adulthood for young adult women.