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Violent Victimization, Aggression, and Parent-Adolescent Relations: Quality Parenting as a Buffer for Violently Victimized Youth

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Abstract

Prospective associations between violent victimization, the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship, and the subsequent onset of violent aggression were examined. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), participants were divided into violent and non-violent cohorts based on whether they had committed an act of violence prior to Wave 1. Results showed that violent victimization at Wave 1 predicted the onset of violent aggression at Wave 2 for adolescents who were non-violent at baseline. Earlier violent victimization, however, had no effect on aggression trajectories for baseline violent adolescents. Parent-adolescent relations functioned as a protective buffer, such that violently victimized adolescents who reported high quality relationships with parents were less likely to be involved in violent aggression at Wave 2. Subsequent gender interaction analyses revealed that while the buffering effect was evident for males, parent-adolescent relations did not protect females from the onset of aggressive behaviors. Findings are evaluated in light of social learning and cycle of violence theories that highlight the role of violent victimization among adolescents.

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Notes

  1. The term violent aggression was used in our paper rather than what Shaffer and Ruback (2002) termed violent offending.

  2. We thank our correspondence with an anonymous reviewer, who pointed out the theoretical implications of including an item within our victimization count that assessed whether the adolescent had been threatened with a weapon. Readers may note that while other violent victimization scales such as the one used by Shaffer and Ruback (2002) include violent victimization items with the potential for serious injury, such as being threatened with a knife or gun, counts that clearly discriminate between actual and potential victimization allow for less ambiguous interpretations of results. For this reason, our scale only included items of actual violent victimization that resulted in injury, as opposed to potential victimization. Similar rationale was used for our violent aggression measure as well.

  3. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health merged the violent aggression incidents of being shot and stabbed into one item. For this reason, the violent aggression counts used in our study consisted of only two items, as opposed to the three item violent victimization count, which measured being shot and stabbed as two separate items.

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Acknowledgments

This study used The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data collected by J. Richard Udry of the Carolina Population Center, CB # 8120, University Square University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-3997. Funding for the data collection was provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), grant P01-HD31921. Preparation and distribution of the data was done by the American Family Data Archive (AFDA), Sociometrics Corporation, 170 State Street, Suite 260, Los Altos, CA 94022-2812 under grant 2 R44 HD31776. Completion of this manuscript was made possible by Career Opportunities in Research (COR), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grant T34 MH20050-04. We are grateful to those who provided comments and support on previous drafts of this manuscript, namely Sacha Bunge, Maral Cingoz, Linda Juang, and Moin Syed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Berkeley, USA

    Mario J. Aceves

  2. Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco, California, 94132, USA

    Jeffrey T. Cookston

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  1. Mario J. Aceves
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Correspondence to Jeffrey T. Cookston.

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M. J. Aceves is a graduate student in the Psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley. His previous research at San Francisco State University has focused on violent victimization experienced by adolescent communities. Currently, he is working on projects pertaining to developmental aspects of stigmatizing attitudes towards mental illness and institutional trust.

J. T. Cookston is a member of the human development program faculty in the department of Psychology at San Francisco State University. His research focuses on the family context with emphasis on parenting, divorce, and interventions and policy for separating and divorcing families.

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Aceves, M.J., Cookston, J.T. Violent Victimization, Aggression, and Parent-Adolescent Relations: Quality Parenting as a Buffer for Violently Victimized Youth. J Youth Adolescence 36, 635–647 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-006-9131-9

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