Desistance from Intimate Partner Violence across the Period from Adolescence to Young Adulthood: The Role of Cognitive Processes and ‘The Relationship Learning Curve’

• In Event: Social Contexts of Teen Dating Violence and Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

Prior research on intimate partner violence has most often focused on the onset and persistence of this major public health problem. Yet while continued violence after initial onset is frequently seen as inevitable, research has shown that cessation within a relationship does occur, and there is evidence of even greater discontinuity across relationships. Although prior research has thus frequently documented relationship and life course specific variations, little work has focused directly on desistance processes (Walker, Bowen, and Brown 2013). In the current study, we draw on research and theorizing about criminal desistance, to determine whether insights from this tradition can be extended to elucidate mechanisms involved in ending violence within intimate relationships. Our mixed method approach relies on in-depth “relationship history narratives” elicited from 102 male and female respondents who participated in a larger longitudinal study (the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study –TARS) and a subsample of 50 of the respondents’ partners. We identify ‘hooks for change,’ and specific attitudinal and relationship-based changes that appear to be linked to successful movement away from unhealthy partners or relationships. Supplemental HGLM models examine these dynamic processes more systematically, relying on the full sample and five waves of interviews (1,219 subjects 4,492 observations) spanning the adolescent to young adult period.

Authors

• Peggy C. Giordano, Bowling Green State University

• Wendi L. Johnson, Bowling Green State University

• Monica A. Longmore, Bowling Green State University

• Wendy D. Manning, Bowling Green State University