This study addresses controversies in the literature of risk factors of abuse perpetrated by men against female intimate partners. Drawing upon the three theoretical perspectives dominant in the literature (family violence, mainstream feminist, and life-course perspectives), I approach the analysis from two directions. First, each perspective suggests risk factors in a particular category of influence; the family violence perspective suggests a focus on family influences, mainstream feminism suggests socio-cultural influences, and life-course theorists suggest a focus on individual/personal factors. Second, the family violence perspective and the life-course also suggested investigating influences organized by age group. I use a sample of 506 boys from the Pittsburgh Youth Study, a longitudinal study consisting of male individuals from public schools of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. More specifically, I focus on the 329 participants in the sample who reported being involved in a romantic relationship by age 23-25, age at which intimate partner abuse was investigated. The findings of the descriptive analysis show that intimate partner abuse is strongly correlated to the variables experience of corporal punishment in the family of origin, attitudes toward women, and delinquency (especially age 19-22). The multivariate analysis confirms that minority males, those who entered the relationship at younger age, those who experienced frequent corporal punishment in the family of origin (age 13-15), and those who had been antisocial during pre-adulthood (age 19-22) were more likely to abuse an intimate female partner during adulthood (age 23-25). The findings on race, age at entering the relationship, and delinquency add new evidence to existing controversies in the empirical literature. In the case of corporal punishment, the results address a gap in the literature.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-12072007-020047 |
| Date | 29 January 2008 |
| Creators | Solinas-Saunders, Monica |
| Contributors | Rolf Loeber, PhD, Phyllis Coontz, PhD, Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, PhD, Salvatore Babones, PhD, John Marx, PhD |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-12072007-020047/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.1568 seconds