The Intergenerational Transmission of Marital Aggression

Data from a nationally representative sample of 2,143 adults were used to explore the relationship between two types of childhood family aggression and severe marital aggression in the next generation. The results indicate that observing hitting between one's parents is more strongly related to involvement in severe marital aggression than is being hit as a teenager by one's parents. In addition, the modeling of marital aggression does not appear to be sex specific. Observing one's father hitting one's mother increases the likelihood that sons will be victims as well as perpetrators, and that daughters will be perpetrators as well as victims of severe marital aggression. These results suggest that the transmission offamily aggression across generations, while not sex specific, tends to be role specific and should be studied as such.