Profiles of Parent-Child Interactions Predicting Adolescent Relationship Abuse and Conditional Tolerance: A Latent Class Analysis

Research shows that adolescent relationship abuse (ARA, also known as teen dating violence or TDV) is a widespread public health problem with significant negative consequences. Anecdotal evidence suggests that parents play an important role in adolescents’ attitudes about ARA as well as their ARA perpetration and victimization experiences. Families for Safe Dates and other family-based TDV interventions are built upon the notion that parents play important roles in preventing ARA. Research to date has been limited to local samples providing youth reports of the parent-child interaction, with little attention to dating-specific communications. . Moreover, past studies took a variable centered approach (e.g., regression analysis). Questions about whether there are distinguishable profiles of parent-youth interactions have been left unanswered. Using an innovative person-centered approach (latent class analysis), this study was set to identify profiles based on six measures of parent-child relationship and interactions, including dating restrictions, dating guidance, parent-child communication, physical punishment, parent-child relationship quality, as well as critical parenting.  The data are from the nationally representative Survey on Teen Relationships and Intimate Violence (STRiV; N=1,117) study of youth ages 12-18. A three-class model was selected to best represent the data, including (1) a “positive parenting” class featuring a positive relationship with the child, a high level of dating guidance (with some dating restrictions), a high likelihood of communicating about sex and birth control, little or no harsh or critical parenting;  (2) a “harsh parenting” class, featuring a  negative relationship with the child, strict dating rules, high probability of communicating about sex and birth control with child, harsh and critical parenting;  and (3) a “poor parenting” class featured with negative relationship with child, little dating guidance or restrictions, lack of communication about sex and birth control and a high likelihood of harsh and critical parenting. Several parent and child covariates predict class membership, aiding prevention program and message design. In addition, children in the “positive parenting” class are significantly less likely to perpetrate ARA and to be tolerant of violence against boys under any conditions. Effects of class membership on ARA victimization and conditional tolerance of violence against girls are in the expected direction, but failed to reach statistical significance. Findings point out the need to addressing parent-child relationship and interaction issues in universal prevention programs aiming to reduce ARA victimization and perpetration, as well as indicated efforts to target specific groups. Detailed implications for prevention research will be discussed.