Adverse Childhood Experiences, Stress, and Intimate Partner Violence Among Newlywed Couples Living With Low Incomes

• Published in: Journal of family psychology Vol. 34; no. 4; pp. 436 - 447
• Main Authors: Hammett, Julia F., Karney, Benjamin R., Bradbury, Thomas N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Psychological Association 01-06-2020
• Subjects: Adult; Adverse childhood experiences; Adverse Childhood Experiences - statistics & numerical data; Adversity; Blame; Childhood Adversity; Childhood experiences; Childhood factors; Couples; Cross-Sectional Studies; Domestic violence; Female; Human; Humans; Husbands; Interpersonal relationship satisfaction; Intimate Partner Violence; Intimate Partner Violence - statistics & numerical data; Life stress; Low income areas; Low income groups; Lower Income Level; Male; Marriage; Married couples; Men; Mental depression; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Newlyweds; Poverty - statistics & numerical data; Psychopathology; Rumination; Self report; Selfblame; Social Stress; Spouses; Spouses - statistics & numerical data; Stress; Stress, Psychological - epidemiology; Stressful events; Structural equation modeling; Test Construction; Wives; Young Adult; intimate partner violence; stress; newlyweds; adverse childhood experiences
• ISSN: 0893-3200; 1939-1293
• DOI: 10.1037/fam0000629

The stress-generation model, commonly applied in studies of psychopathology, purports that vulnerabilities to depression (e.g., rumination, doubt, self-blame, social withdrawal) increase the likelihood that stressful events will later occur, thus activating depressive vulnerabilities and worsening the course of depression. We adapt this model to examine whether adversities experienced early in life serve to channel individuals into stressful circumstances that then evoke situational intimate partner violence (IPV) in adulthood. Cross-sectional self-report data on early adversity, stress, and IPV from 231 ethnically diverse newlywed couples living in low-income communities were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Replicating prior research, reports of early adversity and current life stress covaried reliably with IPV, for husbands and wives. Among husbands, early adversity was linked to IPV via stress, whereas for wives, no such mediation emerged. Results remained robust against alternative models (e.g., controlling for relationship satisfaction, substituting relationship satisfaction for IPV, and examining the interaction between adversity and stress as a predictor of IPV). These findings indicate that the situations that are a defining feature of situational IPV may themselves be a reflection of the adversities that men face early in life; in the absence of these stressors, the association between early adversity and later IPV falls to nonsignificance. Assisting men raised in risky environments to appreciate the effects of stress on their interpersonal exchanges in marriage could reduce rates of IPV.