The Intergenerational Impact of Violence on Families
- FHS Communications
A third of all children surveyed in a three-generational longitudinal study in South Africa experience multiple forms of childhood abuse. One-fifth of that number will become perpetrators themselves, exacerbating intergenerational violence and trauma. Wits researchers and international scientists investigated what can cause and entrench violence and what can be done to prevent it.
The study, "Interrupting the intergenerational cycle of violence: protocol for a three?generational longitudinal mixed?methods study in South Africa" (INTERRUPT_VIOLENCE), followed 1665 adolescents, first interviewed between 2010 and 2012. Subsequently, the original participants (now young adults), their former primary caregiver, and their oldest child (aged six and over) were interviewed.
Wits researchers Franziska Meinck, Nataly Woollett, Mpho Silima and Nicola Christofides, who co-authored the study, built on valuable intergenerational insights from various longitudinal studies, noting that their study helps to understand the drivers and mechanisms for the intergenerational transmission of violence. These are poorly understood. Eliminating violence (in its multiple forms: physical, community, emotional, sexual) is identified as an important target for development within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
“Violence, and violence against children, is a major concern and societal burden, impacting health. It also affects later parenting and discipline practices, which are often harsh,” says Professor Nicola Christofides at the Wits School of Public Health.
The study found that the risk of re-victimisation triples when violence has been present across generations. In the study’s full sample, 20.8% of female young adults experienced physical, emotional or sexual intimate partner violence in the past year. Meanwhile, 75.3% of children in their care experienced physical, emotional, and/or deprivational abuse. Physical abuse is the consistent form of discipline handed down across generations.
“The factors driving this violence across generations is when there is unresolved anger, complicated parenting arrangements leading to challenging attachment relationships across generations, and ‘inflexible injunctive norms’. The latter include gender inequality, girls being treated differently from boys, and an acceptance of violence against children,” said Christofides.
Unfortunately, victims from one generation, having experienced similar violence and its consequences, blamed victims of the next generation, unconscious of what they were repeating. All caregivers in the sample also had their first pregnancies and children in adolescence.
Other structural causes include poverty, food insecurity, unemployment, poor mental health, poor services (justice, health, education, and child protection), and a poor understanding of child and adolescent development.
The paper confirms that 1 billion children experience violence each year. “Violence is associated with reduced academic performance, poor social and cognitive functioning and changes in brain development,” she adds. Indeed, violence is linked with high-risk behaviours such as smoking, alcohol and drug use. These behaviours are also associated with a higher risk for contracting sexually transmitted infections, which can lead to cancer.
Meanwhile, the research process was also unique. It was feasible to include young children in violence research and conduct multi-generational research on violence. Children of all ages were valid reporters of their experiences of violence, but children who were more developmentally and verbally advanced provided richer qualitative narratives.
The study proposes that children must be protected from distress and other harms. “It's vital that society, and indeed, the research process, respects children’s views, allows them to share their thoughts freely and protects them from violence,” says Christofides.
The paper can be accessed here.