Exploring the intergenerational risk for intimate partner violence among Latina mother-daughter pairs

The intergenerational transmission of violence hypothesis is a widely researched mechanism of risk pertaining to children who have grown up witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV) between parents who then later may enter abusive dating relationships. Latinos are growing segments of the population with unique cultural factors influencing the occurrence of IPV. The author used an existing longitudinal data from the Women and Family Project (McCloskey, Figueredo & Koss, 1995) to examine the roles of the mother's abuse history (physical and psychological) and the mother-daughter relationship on the daughter's risk for dating violence among a sample of 50 Latina mother-daughter pairs. Results indicated the mothers' experience with psychological abuse as a significant individual predictor for daughters' risk of dating violence. The Latina daughters' odds of reporting dating violence were three times higher if they also witnessed psychological maltreatment during childhood. Mothers' reported psychological abuse, and daughters' reported quality of the mother-daughter relationship and their dating violence beliefs accounted for over a quarter of the variance for the daughters' risk of dating violence. This finding demonstrated connections between the mothers' psychological maltreatment, the mother-daughter relationship, and the daughters' dating violence beliefs of dating violence among the daughters. The results of this study are discussed in terms of the role of learned behaviors and beliefs, as well as the influence of maternal psychological abuse on the mother-daughter relationship and the mother's psychological health.