The Development of Dating Violence: What Doesn’t Develop, What Does Develop, How Does it Develop, and What Can We Do About It?

Abstract

Before starting this commentary, I need to put my biases onthe table: I believe that healthy development depends onhealthy relationships. This is the central tenet of our nationalnetwork – Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Vio-lence Network (PREVNet). In considering intimate partnerviolence (IPV), therefore, I am predisposed to look at howthese maladaptive relationship styles develop, what rolerelationships play in guiding youths onto troubled pathwaysand, conversely, what role relationships can play in divert-ing youths onto healthy development and relationship path-ways. This set of papers provides a strong foundation forconsideringthe development ofdatingaggression, aswellasthe mechanisms that might underlie the development andmaintenance of aggression in intimate relationships. Withthis developmental perspective, we can also consider poten-tial strategies to prevent and intervene to move youths offthis troubled pathway and onto a healthy relationshippathway.What Doesn’t Develop?The collection of papers in this Special Section providesimportant pieces in the puzzle of how youths come to apoint where they use aggression in their intimate relation-ships. Langhinrichsen-Rohling and Turner (2012), who re-port on an intervention for teen mothers, provide a goodstarting point in our consideration of what critical relation-ship capacities do not develop by reviewing six character-istics of respectful nonviolent relationships as identified bythe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC 2008).These are: (a) beliefin nonviolent conflict resolution; (b) effec-tive communication skills; (c) ability to negotiate and adjust tostress; (d) belief in partner’s right to autonomy; (e) shareddecision-making; and (f) trust. We can hypothesize that youthswho engage in intimate partner violence fail to develop anunderstanding of, and capacity for, these elements of healthyrelationships. Langhinrichsen-Rohling and Turner note that areduced understanding of what constitutes a healthy intimaterelationship has been associated with experiencing IPV. Con-sistent with this perspective of IPVas a problem with develop-ment, Chiodo et al. (2012) found that delinquency and sexualharassmentperpetrationpredictedmembershipinagroupchar-acterized by mutual intimate partner violence. Although delin-quency is different than IPV, youths who are delinquent mayfail to consider the consequences of their behaviors on othersand fall short in non-violent conflict resolution.Ehrensaft and Cohen (2012) point to the lack of devel-opment in self-regulation for youths who are both antisocialand engage in IPV. Within the brain, a lack of developmentof self-regulation implies less capacity for executive func-tioning, cold cognition, and effective social problem solv-ing. This lack of neural regulation is reflected in impulsive,uninhibited and difficult social behavior. In our observa-tions, we found that aggressive youths’ behaviors wereunpredictable: They were more likely to engage in “mixed”behaviors – one moment they were prosocial, followedimmediately with an aggressive behavior, with no opportu-nity for the peer to respond (Pepler et al. 1998). Theseyouths had not learned the essential skills for positiveexchanges in social relationships. Consistent with this,Reyes et al. (2012) note that youths exposed to family orpeer violence have fewer opportunities to learn constructiveconflict resolution strategies than peers who are not exposedto relationship violence.