Violence in teen dating relationships

A lots of youth and teens they don't pay much attention to violence in your relationshipsThey tend to believe that it is a problem that affects exclusively adults. However, during dating, important etiological factors of gender violence that occurs in adult couples may appear.

Violence in young couples: why does it happen?

Violence in relationships is a problem that affects all ages, races, social classes and religions. It is a social and health problem that due to its high incidence has currently produced a important social alarm both due to the seriousness of the events and the negativity of their consequences.

The concept of violence in adolescent dating relationships has been defined by various authors. International investigations use the term "dating aggression and / or dating violence", in Spain, the most used term is that of violence in teenage dating relationships or dating violence.

Defining this type of violence

Ryan Shorey, Gregory Stuart, and Tara Cornelius define dating violence as

those behaviors that involve physical, psychological or sexual aggressions between the members of a couple in courtship. Other authors emphasize that it is violence that implies any attempt to dominate or control a person in a physical, psychological and / or sexual way, causing some type of damage.

Mandatory reading: "The 30 signs of psychological abuse in a relationship"

From psychology, various authors try to explain the causes of this violence in dating relationships in adolescents. Although currently there are few studies that have theoretically addressed the origin and maintenance of violence in these couples, there is a certain tendency to explain it from classical theories about aggressiveness or linked to ideas about gender violence in adult couples.

Some, but not all, of the most relevant theories and theoretical models are set out below to shed some light on this problem.

Attachment theory

John Bowlby (1969) proposes that people shape their relationship style from the interactions and relationships they established during the childhood with the main attachment figures (mother and father). Such interactions influence both the initiation and development of aggressive behavior.

According to this theory, adolescents from homes where they observed and / or suffered abuse, who show problems in regulating their emotions, low abilities to solve problems and / or lower self-confidence, aspects that may also be due as a consequence of the above, would show greater probabilities of establishing relationships as a couple conflicting.

From this perspective, aggressions in adolescence would originate from negative experiences in childhood, such as aggressive behaviors in parents, child abuse, insecure attachment, etc., and at the same time they would influence the occurrence of dysfunctional patterns in adulthood. However, we cannot ignore that personal experiences involve a process of individual elaboration that would allow these patterns to be modified.

Going deeper: "Attachment Theory and the bond between parents and children"

Social Learning Theory

Proposed by Albert bandura in 1973 focused on the concepts of modeling and social learning, explains how learning in childhood occurs through the imitation of what we observe.

The aggressive behaviors in the adolescent couple relationship, would be produced by the learning of the same either from personal experience or from witnessing relationships in which there is violence. Therefore, people who experience or are exposed to violence are more likely to engage in violent behavior compared to those who have not experienced or been exposed to it.

However, we must consider that each person carries out their own construction process on their experience and is not limited exclusively to copying the conflict resolution strategies of the fathers. What's more, some studies have found that not all adolescents who have perpetrated or been victims of assault in her partners, in their childhood they experienced or witnessed aggressive behaviors in their homes, among their friends or with previous partners.

Feminist Perspective

Authors such as Lenore Walker (1989) explains that intimate partner violence has its origin in unequal social distribution based on gender, which produces greater power for men over women. According to this perspective, women are seen as objects of control and domination by the patriarchal system through the principles of theory of social learning, the sociocultural values ​​of patriarchy and gender inequality, transmitted and learned at the individual. Gender violence is violence whose purpose is to maintain control and / or dominance in an unequal relationship, in which both members have received different socialization.

This theoretical perspective has been adapted to violence in adolescent relationships, considering the multiple evidences of the influence that belief systems exert traditional in gender roles, both in the appearance and in the maintenance of violence. This adaptation explains and analyzes why the aggressions that the boys comment show a tendency to be of greater severity, and analyze the possible differences between both genders, for example with respect to consequences.

Social Exchange Theory

Proposed by George C. Homans (1961), indicates that people's motivation lies in obtaining rewards and reducing or eliminating costs in their relationships. Thus, a person's behavior will vary depending on the amount and type of reward that he believes he will receive.

Therefore, violence in intimate relationships is used as a way to reduce costs, gaining greater control and power through aggression. The aggressor's search for control would be related to the reduction of another of the possible costs of relationships, uncertainty, not knowing what the other thinks, what he is doing, where he is, etc. In this line, the lower the reciprocity in a given interaction, the greater the probability of emotional behaviors based on anger or violence.

In turn, such behaviors will make the individual feel disadvantaged and will increase the likelihood that the interaction will become more dangerous and violent. Thus the main benefit of violence is the obtaining of dominance over another individual and the probabilities that a violent exchange ends, they increase when the costs of violent behavior outweigh the benefits that produces.

Cognitive-Behavioral Approach

It focuses the explanation of violence in intimate relationships on cognitions and cognitive processes, highlighting that people seek consistency between their thoughts and between these and their behaviors. The presence of cognitive distortions or inconsistencies between them will produce negative emotions that can lead to the appearance of violence.

However the cognitive-behavioral approach has focused more on the explanation of the cognitive distortions that occur in aggressors, for example, in the same situation in which the partner is not present, the the aggressor will show a greater tendency to think that her partner has not waited for him at home in order to annoy him or as a way of disrespecting him, which will produce emotions negative, on the other hand, a person who is not an aggressor, will think that this is because his partner will be busy or having fun and will produce positive emotions and will be happy thus.

Ecological Model

It was raised by Urie Bronfenbrenner (1987) and adapted by White (2009) to explain violence in intimate relationships, renamed socio-ecological model. It explains violence in intimate relationships through four levels that go from the most general to the most specific: social, community, interpersonal and individual. In each of the levels there are factors that increase or decrease the risk of perpetration of violence or victimization.

Thus, violent behaviors in a couple relationship would be situated in this model at the individual level and would develop due to the previous influence of the other levels. This influence of the various levels comes from the traditional vision of the division of power in society in favor of men, as in the Feminist Theory.

Submits that Violent behaviors against the partner are influenced by beliefs at the social level (for example, the distribution of labor for men and women, sexual division of power), at the community level (such as the integration of relationships gender-differentiated social patterns embedded in schools, the workplace, social institutions, etc.), at the interpersonal level (such as the beliefs of both members of the couple about how the relationship should be), and at the individual level (for example, what does the individual think about what is "appropriate" or not in a relationship). Those behaviors that violate such expectations assumed based on gender, will increase the likelihood of violent behavior and will use those beliefs to justify the use of violence.

Conclusions

Currently there are various theories or perspectives, there has been some scientific advance in this field and new research has been interested in explaining the violence in adolescent romantic relationships, reviewing traditional theories and those theories that focus on any type of violence interpersonal.

However, despite recent scientific progress in this area, there are still many unknowns to be solved that allow us to know both individual as relational on the origin, causes and maintenance of dating violence. This advance would help adolescents both to identify if they suffer violence by their partner and to prevent its appearance, by as well as to identify those factors that can cause gender violence in adult couples and start its prevention from the adolescence.

Bibliographic references:

• Fernández-Fuertes, A. TO. (2011). The prevention of aggressive behaviors in young adolescent couples. In R. J. Carcedo, & V. Guijo, Violence in adolescent and young couples: How to understand and prevent it. (pp. 87-99). Salamanca: Amarú Ediciones.
• Gelles, R. J. (2004). Social factors. In J. Sanmartín, (Eds.), The Labyrinth of Violence. Causes, types and effects. (pp. 47-56.). Barcelona: Ariel.
• R.C. Shorey, G.L. Stuart, T.L. Cornelius (2011) Dating Violence and Substance Use in College Students: A review of the Literature. Aggressive and Violent Behavior, 16 (2011), pp. 541–550 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2011.08.003
• Smith, P.H., White, J.W., & Moracco, K.E. (2009). Becoming who we are: A theoretical explanation of gendered social structures and social networks that shape adolescent interpersonal aggression. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 33 (1), 25-29.
• Walker, L. (1989). Psychology and Violence against women. American Journal of Psychological Association, 44 (4), 695-702.
• Wekerle, C., & Wolfe, D. TO. (1998). The role of child maltreatment and attachment style in adolescent relationship violence. Development and Psychopathology, 10, 571-586.