Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) increase the risk of engaging in intimate partner violence (IPV) in later life.
Objective: This study investigates the association between ACEs and engaging in physical violence toward a romantic partner in emerging adulthood while also accounting for proximal life experiences, including social psychological, intimate relationship, and sociodemographic characteristics.
Participants And Setting: This study draws on two waves of data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study, a 19-year population-based longitudinal cohort study of adolescents transitioning to adulthood from Lucas County, Ohio (United States).
Purpose: Few studies have examined gender-specific concerns within intimate relationships that may be associated with conflict escalation and intimate partner violence (IPV). While prior theorizing has emphasized issues such as men's feelings of jealousy, the role of concerns and conflict related to men's actions has not been as thoroughly investigated. We draw on the life course perspective as background for assessing conflict areas related to men's and women's actions during the young adult period, and subsequently the association between such concerns and the odds of reporting IPV in a current/most recent relationship.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCriminol Public Policy
November 2022
This article explores the role of cognitive transformations in the process of desistance from crime. Based on our own and others' subsequent research, clearly, some aspects of our initial theorizing warrant revisiting and adjustment. The discussion describes changes to ideas about the sequencing of various types of cognitive shifts, suggests the importance of emotional processes in tandem with changes in perspective, and highlights the need to move out of the comfort zone of crime itself when thinking about redefinitions that support desistance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile current evidence indicates that the United States did not experience a baby boom during the pandemic, few empirical studies have considered the underlying rationale for the American baby bust. Relying on data collected during the pandemic ( = 574), we find that pandemic-related subjective assessments (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To highlight the development of young adult couples' shared understandings about reasons for conflict in their relationships, views about why some disagreements included the use of aggression ("causes"), and gendered perspectives on these relationship dynamics.
Background: Feminist theories have centered on relationship dynamics associated with intimate partner violence (IPV), but have focused primarily on men's concerns (e.g.
Stemming intimate partner violence among adults demands earlier education and skill-building supportive of healthy youth and young adult dating relationships. The current U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The health belief model suggests that individuals' beliefs affect behaviors associated with health. This study examined whether Ohioans' pre-existing medical health diagnoses affected their belief about personal health risk and their compliance with social distancing during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Prior research examining physical and mental diagnoses and social distancing compliance is nearly nonexistent.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the U.S., many young adults who have had contact with the criminal justice system are parents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough research suggests that parental incarceration is associated with intergenerational continuity in crime, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. Using multi-population structural equation modeling and data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study ( = 1207), the current study explored specific experiences associated with labeling as well as internalizing labels, including experiencing corporal punishment during childhood, criminal arrests during adolescence, and identifying as a troublemaker/partier in young adulthood (measured with reflected appraisals), as potential mechanisms linking parental incarceration and young adults' offending. We assessed whether this association differed by young adults' level of emotional independence, that is, freedom from the need for parental approval.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe focus on the character of adolescent and young adult relationships, and argue that attention to interpersonal features of intimate partner violence (IPV) is necessary for a comprehensive view of this form of violence. Drawing on ideas from feminist post-structural perspectives, we highlight studies that develop a somewhat non-traditional but nevertheless gendered portrait of relationships as a backdrop for exploring dyadic processes associated with IPV. Findings are based on quantitative and qualitative analyses from a longitudinal study of a large, diverse sample of young women and men interviewed first during adolescence, and five additional times across the transition to adulthood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe build on prior research examining military involvement and criminal involvement by investigating the importance of acquiring the more complete "respectability package" that includes marriage as well as military experience and variations among White and Black respondents. Using data from Waves I and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; = 5,801), analyses use logistic regression models to assess associations of military service, marriage, and race with odds of reoffending among White and Black young adults who reported offending at Wave I. Military involvement was associated with lower odds of offending for Black respondents only, while marriage was associated with decreased odds of reoffending across both groups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Research on criminal continuity and change has traditionally focused on elements of the adult life course (e.g., marriage and employment); however, recent social and economic changes suggest the need to consider a broader range of factors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial characteristics are prominent factors in mate selection, but they can be risk factors for intimate partner violence. Yet this prior work is limited, as it largely focuses on demographic differences (or asymmetries) between intimate partners. In addition to demographic asymmetries, we explored how differences in relational and risk behaviors were associated with intimate partner violence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSutherland's differential association theory and the life course perspective have at times been conceptualized as contrasting theories of criminal behavior. I argue instead that our understanding of delinquency, the dynamics underlying criminal persistence and desistance, and intergenerational patterns, will be enhanced by a more explicit integration of these two traditions. I focus on family processes, as these are foundational intimate relationships that remain underappreciated as a source of lifelong learning and influence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent increases in the average age at first marriage have created an extended period during which young adults frequently continue to socialize with friends, even as romantic ties typically become increasingly serious. Nevertheless, little research has focused on some of the challenges associated with navigating these two social worlds simultaneously. The current study expanded the traditional lens of social learning theory to investigate associations between a range of attitudes and behaviors of friends and a serious form of conflict-intimate partner violence (IPV).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Researchers have found that experiencing parental incarceration has long-term consequences for children, such as involvement in crime. However, few studies have examined how parental incarceration influences identity endorsement. Given that self-identities influence behavior, including criminal activity, understanding precursors of self-identities is important.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Rev Criminol
January 2019
In this review, we consider theory and research focused on girls' and women's violence, with an emphasis on studies that inform long-running debates about whether uniquely gendered explanations are required to understand such behaviors. The review emphasizes potentially malleable social processes and influences, and studies that have explored neighborhood, family, and peer-based sources of risk. We also examine contemporary research on precursors of a specific type of aggression-intimate partner violence -where self-reports of perpetration have been found to be similar across gender, but research has consistently shown that the consequences are generally more serious for female victims.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJealousy has been linked to a number of deleterious relationship outcomes; yet few studies have explored the broader ways in which inducing jealousy affects intimate relationships. Using data on 892 young adults from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS), we examined correlates and consequences of intentionally inducing jealousy in intimate relationships. Results indicated that factors both unique and internal to the intimate dyad and those external to the intimate relationship were associated with jealousy-inducing behaviors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSociol Forum (Randolph N J)
September 2019
Most theoretical treatments of intimate partner violence (IPV) focus on individual-level processes. More recently, scholars have begun to examine the role of macrolevel factors. Results of that research indicate that social ties facilitate the diffusion of cultural norms-including tolerance of deviance/violence-across neighborhoods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChildren experiencing parental incarceration face numerous additional disadvantages, but researchers have often relied on these other co-occurring factors primarily as controls. In this article, we focus on the intimate links between crime and incarceration, as well as on the broader family context within which parental incarceration often unfolds. Thus, parents' drug use and criminal behavior that precedes and may follow incarceration periods may be ongoing stressors that directly affect child well-being.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Although some studies have found that incarceration is associated with young adults' poor health, confounding factors including adolescent health risks, and mediating influences such as stress have not been examined in the same study. We assessed whether variation in criminal justice system experience (none, arrest only, incarceration) influenced young adults' self-reported depressive symptoms and poor physical health after accounting for prospective risks to health including adolescent health risks. We then assessed whether stress mediated associations between criminal justice involvement and the two health indicators.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrior empirical research on intimate partner violence (IPV) in adolescence and young adulthood often focuses on exposure to violence in the family-of-origin using retrospective and cross-sectional data. Yet individuals' families matter beyond simply the presence or absence of abuse, and these effects may vary across time. To address these issues, the present study employed five waves of longitudinal data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS) to investigate the trajectory of IPV from adolescence to young adulthood ( = 950 respondents, 4,750 person-periods) with a specific focus on how familial factors continue to matter across the life course.
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