Does Childhood Experience of Interparental Abuse Shape Women’s Attitude Toward Intimate Partner Violence in Their Adult Life? Evidence From 31 Developing Countries

Abstract

A significant amount of literature exists on the lasting effects of interparental abuse on children’s psychological health as adults. However, evidence on how children’s childhood experience of interparental violence shapes their attitude toward partner violence in adult intimate relationships is limited. Given the existing evidence that women’s acceptance of partner violence as a social norm increases the risk of partner violence, we analyzed the effect of girls’ witnessing interparental abuse (where a father is a perpetrator) on their attitude toward partner violence in their intimate relationships as adults. We used data from the Demographic and Health Surveys for 31 low and middle-income countries in Asia and Africa. Aggregating information about women’s attitudes toward partner violence into a binary “intimate partner violence acceptance” variable, we found that a woman who witnessed her father beat her mother was 1.62 times more likely to justify partner violence than a woman who did not experience such interparental abuse (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.62, 95% CI [1.57, 1.66], p < .001). Additionally, using individual components of acceptance as response variables, we found that a woman who witnessed interparental abuse was significantly more likely to justify partner violence if she went out without telling her husband (OR = 1.49, 95% CI [1.45, 1.54], p < .001), neglected children (OR = 1.53, 95% CI [1.49, 1.58], p < .001), argued with the husband (OR = 1.49, 95% CI [1.45, 1.53], p < .001), refused sex with the husband (OR = 1.35, 95% CI [1.31, 1.39], p < .001), or burned food (OR = 1.36, 95% CI [1.31, 1.41], p < .001). This study highlights the need to put in place children-specific social policies to limit the intergenerational transmission of the adverse effects of intimate partner violence.

Keywords

domestic violence victimization interparental violence social learning theory

Introduction

Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women is a serious violation of human rights, leading to massive physical and emotional health costs for women in developed and developing countries. IPV is one of the most pervasive human rights violations (Seabrook et al., 2019), denying women equality (Zarling & Berta, 2017), security and dignity (Miller & Segal, 2019), and right to enjoy fundamental freedoms (Harland et al., 2021), and causing mental disorders and maladjustments (Cirici Amell et al., 2023).

IPV exists in almost all societies regardless of ethnicities, cultures, and geographical borders. The wide variation in rates of IPV in different countries suggests that potentially modifiable cultural factors play an important role in determining both the actual rates of violence and attitudes toward its acceptability. Indeed, many cultures condone a certain amount of marital violence, which according to WHO (2009), is probably the most defining characteristic of violence against women.

However, considering the diversity in cultural and social contexts, detailed empirical studies are also needed from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) since the prevalence of domestic violence varies substantially across cultures and countries (Elghossain et al., 2019; Hindin & Gultiano, 2006). On average, one-third of the population of women globally face human rights violations at the hands of some family member, primarily by their intimate partner (Yount et al., 2022). The recent estimates from 55 LMICs suggest that 26% of women (ever-married aged 15–49) experienced physical violence, 25% of the women experienced emotional violence, and 9% of the women experienced sexual violence by their intimate partner at some point in their life (DHS, 2022). Across the 28 States of the European Union, almost one in five women have experienced physical spousal violence (Walby & Olive, 2014), while surveys in some other countries indicate that as much as two out of three women experience some form of IPV (Asare et al., 2022; Douki et al., 2003; Miedema et al., 2022).

While ample literature exists on the link between the childhood experience of parental abuse and experience of violence as adults, there is limited information about how a person’s childhood experience of interparental violence shapes the attitudinal acceptance of violence in adult intimate relationships. Our study aims to fill this gap in the literature. The main objective of our study was to analyze how women’s childhood experience of domestic abuse in which their mother was the victim shapes their attitude toward acceptance of violence in their own intimate relationships.

Theoretical Background

Competing theories explain why and how childhood experiences shape adult relationships. Social learning theory posits that individuals learn behavior by observing and modeling the behavior of significant others in their lives (Bandura, 1969). Social learning theorists contend that children imitate the behavior of their parents and peers (Bandura, 1973; Owens & Straus, 1975). When children witness interparental aggression, which may take the forms of verbal abuse (insults or threats), emotional abuse (humiliation and degradation), or physical violence (kicking furniture or throwing objects), the probability of the children imitating aggressive behavior later in life increases (Anderson & Cramer-Benjamin, 1999). Parents, particularly mothers, are likely to be an inﬂuential source of such learned attitudes and behaviors. Thus, the social learning theory provides the theoretical underpinnings for the intergenerational transmission of violence.

The intergenerational transmission of violence theory presumes that exposure to violence in the family is a strong predictor of relationship violence in later life (Glaus et al., 2022). Exposure to violence in the family and the resulting behavior particularly passes through successive generations, and this intergenerational transmission of violence has a clear gendered dimension (Low et al., 2019). Children exposed to interparental violence were more likely to both perpetrate and be victimized by violence as adults relative to non-exposed children (Rivera & Fincham, 2015).

Witnessing violence within families may legitimize and justify its use, particularly in intimate relationships (Islam et al., 2014). It is suggested that cognitive factors, reflected in an individual’s sensitivity to a given act of provocation, significantly affect the odds of intergenerational transmission of IPV (Kim, 2012). The intergenerational transmission theory often incorporates the notion that learning to be victimized can pass on to successive generations (Thornberry & Henry, 2013).

However, a limited number of studies exist on the attitudinal acceptance of spousal violence, particularly in Asian countries (Shaikh, 2016), despite the existence of cultural norms discriminating against women and a variety of popular media portraits of gender inequality.

Attitudinal Acceptance of IPV

Acceptance of IPV has adverse consequences for women. Acceptance of violence is a significant predictor of spousal violence (Amir-ud-Din et al., 2021). IPV is generally seen as a private, personal, and family problem rather than a social and legal problem requiring the intervention of social welfare and social control agents (Boira et al., 2017). Consequently, women continue to suffer spousal violence without reporting it (McCleary-Sills et al., 2016).

Several socio-demographic and behavioral risk factors and correlates of attitudinal acceptance of spousal violence have been identified in different studies. Women may accept and justify spousal violence in light of their training in conventional gender roles, cultural and religious norms, and financial and emotional dependency (Karlsson et al., 2016).

Children reared in the climate of domestic violence against their mothers may suffer from severe psychosocial and mental health problems (Bancroft et al., 2011). The effects may be particularly important for a female child being reared in a patriarchal culture with a climate accepting of spousal violence. A mother from such a culture may vertically transmit “attitudinal acceptance of violence” to the girl child, who, in turn, may continue accepting spousal violence as part of the conventional gender roles and imbalanced distribution of power in marital relationships.

Interparental Violence and Acceptance of Partner Violence: Some Theoretical Links

Previous literature illustrates that factors such as patriarchal culture, witnessing interparental violence, and intergenerational transmission of violence are correlated with a women’s attitudinal acceptance of spousal violence (Flood & Pease, 2009). It is quite likely that women brought up in a violent family had frequent exposure to interparental violence in their childhood. This might make them desensitized to the harmful consequences of spousal violence and hence they may accept spousal violence as part of the family adjustment process, particularly in LMICs. The empirical evidence from previous literature supports the same viewpoint that women witnessing interparental violence were more likely to experience violence later in life, and acceptance of violence mediated the link between witnessing interparental violence and spousal violence (Calvete et al., 2018).

Women who are exposed to interparental violence during childhood may be more likely to imitate their parents’ behaviors, particularly in terms of the “attitudinal acceptance of violence” and, in turn, may continue accepting spousal violence as part of the conventional gender roles and imbalanced distribution of power in marital relationships (Zhao et al., 2022). Because children often learn to resolve disputes with others by observing how their parents resolve parental conflicts (Staudt, 2021), women often accept the spousal violence by imitating their mother’s attitude about acceptance of violence (Scrafford et al., 2020). Haj-Yahia (1998) showed in their study in Palestine that women routinely justify violence if the wife does not obey her husband, undermines his authority, insults him in front of his friends, does not respect his parents and siblings, and does not live up to his expectations for functioning as a wife and a mother. This might reflect the fear that seeking legal help will break through the boundaries of the family, ruin the family’s good reputation, and damage the cultural, economic, educational, and political status of all family members, not to mention severe consequences, including breaking up the family through separation, imprisonment, and divorce (Amir-ud-Din & Abbas, 2020).

Concerns for Diversity

Our sample is nationally representative as well as representative of the LMICs in Africa and Asia. In different countries, socioeconomic and political institutions may fundamentally differ despite obvious similarities and lead to distinct sociocultural norms regarding partner violence. So, women’s response to the questions about their attitude to partner violence reflects the diversity of their lived experiences across different cultures. To capture the diversity in national institutions, we used national identities as control variables in the regression analysis. Additionally, we conducted a disaggregated country-level analysis to understand how witnessing interparental abuse in childhood shapes attitudes toward partner violence as adults in different cultures. However, the motivation behind using a large cross-country sample was to ensure greater generalizability. Still, our disaggregated country-level analysis also serves the purpose of specificity.

Our study aims to assess the effect of women’s childhood experience of interparental abuse on their attitude toward IPV in their adult life by considering the social learning theory and intergenerational transmission of violence based on a nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of 31 countries in Asia and Africa to examine the diversity in the results.

Methodology

Data Sources

The data used for this paper was taken from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series of Demographic and Health Surveys (IPUMS-DHS). IPUMS-DHS consistently codes variables across all countries and years. The IPUMS-DHS database includes both individual and household-level information.

We used all countries for which the data on women’s acceptance of IPV and their experience of interparental abuse was available. In addition, the countries in our sample are all LMICs. A total of 31 countries, including 24 African countries (Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe) and 7 Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, India, Jordan, Nepal, Pakistan) met our criteria. The data available for these countries corresponded to different survey waves from each year, starting from 2004 to 2018. The participants in the study were ever-married women aged 15 to 49 years. The weighted sample size was 466,330, which included only those women who had complete information about acceptance of violence and their experience of interparental abuse. Since the DHS has a two-stage cluster design, robust standard errors and sampling weights were used to make the data representative.

Study Outcomes

The outcome variable in this study is the acceptance of violence, which reflects on respondents’ perceptions of violence. This factor has been evaluated in several previous studies (Ali & Watson, 2020; Atomssa et al., 2021) and is considered a significant risk factor for IPV (Amir-ud-Din et al., 2021).

We developed an index of the attitudinal acceptance of violence from the information on the women’s attitudes toward IPV. DHS asks female respondents a set of questions related to the conditions under which a husband is justified in beating his wife. The answers are given in a binary “Yes” or “No” format on the five parameters, viz., (i) if the wife goes out without telling the husband, (ii) if the wife neglects the children, (iii) if the wife argues with husband, (iv) if the wife refuses to have sex with husband, and (v) if the wife burns the food. Following Some et al. (2021), we summed the information from these five variables, which gave us an acceptance of violence scale with a minimum of zero where a woman did not justify violence even in a single dimension, and a maximum of five when a woman justified partner violence in all five dimensions. Cronbach’s α test was applied to assess the consistency of women’s acceptance of violence, and the scale’s internal stability was high as the estimated Cronbach’s α was .86 in our sample. As we are more interested in the presence or absence of the justification of partner violence rather than the degree of acceptance, following Amir-ud-Din et al. (2021), we split the acceptance of violence scale into a binary variable with women not justifying partner violence as the base category.

Exposures

The primary exposure variable in this study is women’s childhood experience of interparental abuse. DHS asks the respondents if their father ever beat their mother. Previous evidence suggests that a woman’s experience of interparental abuse crucially shapes their attitude toward partner violence (Aboagye et al., 2021) and, in turn, increases the risk of partner violence (Wagle et al., 2021). Possible answers to the question regarding the respondent’s abuse of mother by her father are “No” (reference) and “Yes.”

Potential Confounders

In the previous literature, women’s age, education, employment status, and marital status have been used as predictors of IPV justification in addition to their exposure to media (Aboagye et al., 2021; Jesmin, 2015; Waltermaurer et al., 2013). Moreover, the residential status and household wealth quintile have also been used to predict IPV justification (Aboagye et al., 2021; Jesmin, 2015; Waltermaurer et al., 2013). Therefore, we have adjusted our model with respondent’s empowerment, respondent’s employment status, respondent’s and her husband’s education, household wealth status, respondent’s age at first marriage or cohabitation, age of respondent’s husband at the time of the interview, number of children ever born to the respondent, respondent’s residential status, and if she owns house or land. Two periods, 2001 to 2010 and 2011 to 2020 were included as time fixed effect, and countries as categorical variables were included in the model as country fixed effects. Time fixed effects capture the changes in women’s attitude toward IPV that have occurred because of institutional changes such as legislative frameworks, changes in the public attitudes brought about by advocacy groups and mainstream and social media, and changes in men’s attitudes to the women’s empowerment agenda being pursued at the global level and in LMICs. Sustainable Development Goals also consider it a goal to get rid of violence. The categories of each variable are given in Table 2, with the first category as the reference.

Moreover, we included women’s empowerment as an important confounding factor because women’s empowerment is central to understanding IPV (Jesmin, 2017). In the previous literature, women’s empowerment is defined and operationalized in various ways. For example, Kabeer (1999) considers women’s empowerment as their ability to exercise choice in three dimensions: resources (both material and non-material), agency, and achievements. As IPUMS-DHS has limited information about women’s empowerment, we follow a more reductionist approach of Allendorf (2007), who measured women’s empowerment as their household-level decision-making role about their healthcare, their say in making large household purchases, and their say in visiting their family or relatives. Following Zafar et al. (2022), we developed an index of women’s empowerment by aggregating these three indicators in two steps. First, we considered women’s empowerment as a scale of “fully empowered,” “empowered,” and “not empowered” in the three individual dimensions. A woman is “fully empowered” if she makes the decision all by herself. We consider a woman “empowered” if she makes a joint decision (with her husband or someone else). A woman is considered “not empowered” if she has no say in the decision. This scale can range between zero (when she has no say in all three dimensions) or three (when she has a say in all the dimensions). In the second step, we split this scale into two outcomes: “not empowered” the women who did not have any say in any of the three dimensions, and “empowered” if she is wholly or partially empowered in at least one dimension.

Statistical Analysis

The outcome variable for this study is women’s acceptance of IPV split into “Does not accept IPV” as the reference group and “Accepts IPV” as the alternative category. We first did a bivariate association check to see if the women’s experience of interparental abuse and other covariates are significantly associated with the outcome variable. Additionally, we used a multivariate logistic regression model with country and time fixed effects to estimate the association between women’s experience of interparental abuse and their acceptance of IPV.The analysis was first done by pooling the data for all the analyzed countries. Then the analysis was repeated at the country level to explore potential context-specific country differences.

\begin{array}{l} {Acceptance}_{i, t} = β_{0} + β_{1} Interparental {abuse}_{i, t} \\ + β_{j} X_{i, t} + γ {Country}_{i} + δ {Decade}_{j} + ϵ_{i, t} \end{array}

(1)

where Acceptance_i,t is a binary response variable, the subscript i refers to the country, and t indicates the survey year. Interparental abuse_i,_t refers to a woman’s experience of interparental abuse in country i and survey year t. The X_i,_t refers to a set of covariates. Country_i is a categorical variable and is included in the specification to account for cross-country heterogeneity. Decade_j measures the time fixed effect, and j takes two values associated with two decades: 2001 to 2010 (reference category) and 2011 to 2020.

Moreover, a continental fixed effect was included in a multivariate logistic regression to see how women in Africa and Asia differ with respect to their attitudes toward partner violence (equation (2)).

\begin{array}{l} {Acceptance}_{i, t} = β_{0} + β_{1} Interparental {abuse}_{i, t} \\ + β_{j} X_{i, t} + γ {Continent}_{c} + δ {Decade}_{j} + ϵ_{i, t} \end{array}

(2)

where Continent_c takes two values: Africa (reference category) and Asia.

Finally, we wanted to see how interparental abuse affects women’s attitude toward partner violence in five specific situations (is a husband justified in beating his wife if she (i) goes out without telling her husband, (ii) neglects the children, (iii) argues with the husband, (iv) refuses to have sex with the husband, and (v) burns the food?). We regressed information about all five situations in which a woman justified partner violence on interparental abuse and a set of covariates.

\begin{array}{l} IPV justification {type}_{i, t}^{τ} = β_{0} + β_{1} Interparental {abuse}_{i, t} \\ + β_{j} X_{i, t} + γ {Continent}_{c} + δ {Decade}_{j} + ϵ_{i, t} \end{array}

(3)

where IPV justification type is a “yes/no” binary response variable and contains information about five situations in which women justified partner violence. The superscript $τ$ can vary from 1 to 5 and refers to the situations (is a husband justified in beating his wife if she (i) goes out without telling the husband, (ii) neglects the children, (iii) argues with the husband, (iv) refuses to have sex with the husband, and (v) burns the food?) in which a woman may potentially justify partner violence.

Results

Women have diverse experiences regarding interparental abuse. Supplemental Table S1 gives the share of women who experience interparental abuse and their attitude toward acceptance of partner violence. Around 50% of women experienced interparental abuse in Afghanistan and Uganda, while less than 10% experienced interparental abuse in Benin, Jordan, and Burkina Faso. Similarly, the highest ratio of acceptance for partner violence was recorded in Afghanistan (82.7%), followed by Mali (79.7%), and Chad (75.8%). In comparison, very little acceptance for partner violence was recorded in Jordan (14.2%), Malawi (12.6%), South Africa (%.6%), and Nepal (0.8%).

Bivariate association (Table 1) suggests that the factors significantly associated with acceptance of partner violence are women’s experience of interparental abuse, women’s empowerment, women’s employment status, education, age, number of children born, ownership of assets, and residential status, in addition to their partner’s age and education, household wealth status, and countries and continents and decades.

Table 1.

Bivariate Association Between Acceptance of Partner Violence and Selected Variables.

	Unacceptable* (%)	Acceptable^† (%)	Prob.
Did respondent’s father ever beat her mother
No (n = 357,679)	80.5	69.8	p < .000
Yes (n = 108,651)	19.5	30.2
Woman’s empowerment
Not empowered (n = 724,349)	42.9	47.2	p < .000
Empowered (n = 875,680)	57.1	52.8
Woman’s employment status
Not working (n = 714,730)	47.3	45.5	p < .000
Working (n = 792,063)	52.7	54.5
Woman’s education
No education (n = 558,543)	28.3	44.7	p < .000
Primary (n = 424,327)	26.2	28.7
Secondary (n = 481,759)	35.7	23.8
Higher (n = 104,036)	9.8	2.8
Husband’s education
No education (n = 378,079)	24.5	39.6	p < .000
Primary (n = 304,054)	25.4	26.7
Secondary (n = 390,219)	36.2	27.6
Higher (n = 124,249)	14	6.1
Household wealth status
Poor (n = 542,558)	31.5	42.5	p < .000
Middle (n = 286,730)	18.2	21.1
Rich (n = 639,170)	50.3	36.4
Age of husband/partner
<24 (n = 56,151)	4.9	5.3	p < .000
25–39 (n = 574,010)	51	49.6
40+ (n = 516,928)	44.1	45.2
Age at first marriage or cohabitation
<18 (n = 624,846)	45.8	56.2	p < .000
18–24 (n = 537,262)	44.8	38.5
25–49 (n = 97,127)	9.3	5.3
Total children ever born
No child (n = 395,269)	25.8	23.2	p < .000
1–4 (n = 829,729)	54.6	50.6
5+ (n = 365,523)	19.7	26.2
Woman owns house or land
Does not possess (n = 1,274,137)	80.6	79.3	p < .000
Possesses (n = 325,892)	19.4	20.7
Urban-rural status
Rural (n = 1,011,751)	58.1	71.8	p < .000
Urban (n = 588,278)	41.9	28.2
Continent
Africa (n = 1,060,385)	63.9	69.2	p < .000
Asia (n = 539,644)	36.1	30.8

Share of women who do not accept spousal violence irrespective of the fact (i) if wife goes out without telling her husband, (ii) if wife neglects the children, (iii) if wife argues with the husband, (iv) if wife refuses to have sex with the husband, and (v) if wife burns the food.

†

Share of the women who justify spousal violence for at least one reason.

The multivariate logistic regression model (Model 1 in Table 2) suggests that the odds of accepting the spousal violence are 1.62 times higher for the women who witnessed their fathers beat their mothers in their childhood than the women whose fathers did not beat their mothers (Adjusted odds ratios [AOR] = 1.62, 95% CI [1.57, 1.66], p < .001). In addition to women’s experience of interparental abuse, the only factor associated with higher odds of acceptance of violence was, counterintuitively, women’s employment status (AOR = 1.10, 95% CI [1.07, 1.13], p < .001), which is explained in the discussion of the results section.

Table 2.

Multivariate Logistic Regression: Decade and Country Fixed Effects.

Women’s acceptance of IPV	Model 1		Model 2
Women’s acceptance of IPV	Adj. OR	95% CI	Adj. OR	95% CI
Father beat mother of respondent
No	Ref.
Yes	1.617***	[1.574, 1.662]	1.757***	[1.711, 1.804]
Woman’s empowerment
Not empowered	Ref.
Empowered	0.831***	[0.806,0.857]	0.785^***	[0.762,0.809]
Woman’s employment status
Not working	Ref.
Working	1.102***	[1.072, 1.132]	1.026	[1.000, 1.052]
Woman’s education
No education	Ref.
Primary	1.001	[0.971, 1.033]	0.836***	[0.811, 0.861]
Secondary	0.815***	[0.787, 0.843]	0.663***	[0.641, 0.686]
Higher	0.510***	[0.477, 0.545]	0.376***	[0.352, 0.401]
Husband’s education
No education	Ref.
Primary	1.014	[0.981, 1.048]	0.804***	[0.779, 0.830]
Secondary	0.932***	[0.900, 0.964]	0.767***	[0.741, 0.794]
Higher	0.762***	[0.722, 0.805]	0.646***	[0.612, 0.683]
Household wealth status
Poor	Ref.
Middle	1.007	[0.977, 1.038]	1.085***	[1.053, 1.118]
Rich	0.789***	[0.762, 0.817]	0.990	[0.955, 1.026]
Husband’s age
<24	Ref.
25–39	0.930**	[0.884, 0.979]	0.975	[0.929, 1.024]
40+	0.917**	[0.868, 0.969]	0.925**	[0.877, 0.975]
Woman’s age
<18	Ref.
18–24	0.917***	[0.896, 0.938]	0.936***	[0.916, 0.957]
25–49	0.794***	[0.759, 0.830]	0.806***	[0.771, 0.841]
Number of children
No child	Ref.
1–4	0.995	[0.956, 1.036]	0.970	[0.933, 1.009]
5+	0.964	[0.919, 1.011]	1.014	[0.967, 1.063]
Woman owns house/land
Does not possess	Ref.
Possesses	0.997	[0.963, 1.031]	1.106***	[1.073, 1.139]
Residence
Rural	Ref.
Urban	0.825***	[0.794, 0.857]	0.755***	[0.728, 0.784]
Continent
Africa			Ref.
Asia			1.230***	[1.190, 1.270]
Decade
2001–2010	Ref.
2011–2020	0.881***	[0.847, 0.917]	0.947**	[0.916, 0.981]
Country-fixed effects	Yes
N	318,580		318,580
F	261.5		299.1
p	0		0

Note. Exponentiated coefficients; 95% confidence intervals in brackets. Adj. OR = adjusted odds ratio; IPV: intimate partner violence.

p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

The factors that are associated with lower acceptance of spousal violence are women’s empowerment (AOR = 0.83, 95% CI [0.81, 0.86], p < .001), rich household wealth status (AOR = 0.79, 95% CI [0.76, 0.82], p < .001), higher levels of respondent’s education (AOR = 0.51, 95% CI [0.48, 0.55], p < 0.001 for higher education), and husband’s education (AOR = 0.76, 95% CI [0.72, 0.81], p < .001 for higher education), increased age of the respondent (AOR = 0.79, 95% CI [0.76, 0.83], p < .001 for women aged 25–49) as well as the age of husband (AOR = 0.92, 95% CI [0.87, 0.97], p < .001 for men aged 40 and above), living in the urban areas (AOR = 0.83, 95% CI [0.79, 0.86], p < .001). The odds of acceptance of spousal violence is at the highest in Afghanistan while women are least likely to accept spousal violence in Mozambique (AOR = 0.06, 95% CI [0.05, 0.06], p < .001), Malawi (AOR = 0.04, 95% CI [0.039, 0.049], p < .001), and Nepal (AOR = 0.04, 95% CI [0.036, 0.048], p < .001). Acceptance of spousal violence has significantly come down after 2010 compared with the study period between 2001 and 2010 (AOR = 0.88, 95% CI [0.85, 0.92], p < .001).

Continental fixed effects

Given that we are using data from Africa and Asia, comparing women’s acceptance of IPV in both continents would be pertinent. Adjusting the regression model with a categorical continental variable (Model 2 in Table 3) suggests that women in Asia are 23% more likely to accept partner violence than their African counterparts (AOR = 1.23, 95% CI [1.19, 1.27], p < .001). After adjusting the model with continental fixed effects, women’s experience of interparental abuse slightly increases the odds of acceptance of IPV from 1.62 (AOR = 1.62, 95% CI [1.57, 1.66], p < .001) to 1.76 (AOR = 1.76, 95% CI [1.71, 1.80], p < .001).

Table 3.

Effect of interparental violence on women’s attitude toward intimate partner violence.

Husband is justified in beating wife if she	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)
Husband is justified in beating wife if she	Goes out without telling	Neglects children	Argues	Refuses sex	Burns food
Father beat mother of respondent
No	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
Yes	1.494*** [1.451, 1.537]	1.531*** [1.488, 1.575]	1.489*** [1.445, 1.534]	1.349*** [1.305, 1.394]	1.359*** [1.312, 1.408]
Woman’s empowerment
Not empowered	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
Empowered	0.786*** [0.760, 0.812]	0.860*** [0.834, 0.887]	0.811*** [0.785, 0.838]	0.727*** [0.702, 0.752]	0.743*** [0.717, 0.771]
Woman’s employment status
Not working	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
Working	1.096*** [1.064, 1.128]	1.140*** [1.108, 1.172]	1.100*** [1.068, 1.133]	1.048** [1.014, 1.082]	1.119*** [1.082, 1.158]
Woman’s education
No education	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
Primary	0.965* [0.934, 0.996]	1.060*** [1.027, 1.094]	0.966* [0.934, 0.999]	0.906*** [0.875, 0.939]	0.927*** [0.891, 0.964]
Secondary	0.774*** [0.745, 0.803]	0.905*** [0.873, 0.938]	0.780*** [0.751, 0.810]	0.669*** [0.639, 0.700]	0.709*** [0.677, 0.743]
Higher	0.430*** [0.395, 0.469]	0.567*** [0.526, 0.611]	0.453*** [0.416, 0.493]	0.390*** [0.350, 0.434]	0.415*** [0.368, 0.469]
Husband’s education
No education	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
Primary	0.991 [0.958, 1.026]	1.031 [0.996, 1.066]	0.995 [0.961, 1.030]	0.961* [0.924, 0.999]	0.952* [0.915, 0.990]
Secondary	0.902*** [0.870, 0.935]	0.941** [0.908, 0.976]	0.920*** [0.886, 0.954]	0.890*** [0.854, 0.927]	0.934** [0.895, 0.975]
Higher	0.727*** [0.684, 0.773]	0.781*** [0.737, 0.827]	0.758*** [0.713, 0.806]	0.779*** [0.726, 0.835]	0.781*** [0.725, 0.841]
Household wealth status
Poor	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
Middle	1.047** [1.014, 1.081]	1.076*** [1.042, 1.110]	0.972 [0.940, 1.004]	0.976 [0.940, 1.013]	0.978 [0.942, 1.014]
Rich	0.846*** [0.815, 0.879]	0.879*** [0.848, 0.911]	0.765*** [0.735, 0.795]	0.750*** [0.719, 0.784]	0.769*** [0.734, 0.806]
Husband’s age
<24	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
25–39	0.979 [0.928, 1.032]	0.991 [0.941, 1.044]	0.929** [0.880, 0.981]	0.988 [0.930, 1.049]	0.898*** [0.844, 0.955]
40+	0.984 [0.928, 1.043]	0.998 [0.942, 1.056]	0.932* [0.879, 0.988]	1.011 [0.947, 1.080]	0.921* [0.860, 0.987]
Woman's age
<18	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
18–24	0.926*** [0.904, 0.949]	0.939*** [0.917, 0.962]	0.906*** [0.884, 0.930]	0.889*** [0.865, 0.913]	0.905*** [0.879, 0.932]
25–49	0.826*** [0.786, 0.868]	0.822*** [0.784, 0.863]	0.788*** [0.749, 0.829]	0.792*** [0.748, 0.839]	0.785*** [0.735, 0.838]
Number of children
No child	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
1–4	1.011 [0.968, 1.057]	1.061** [1.017, 1.107]	0.998 [0.956, 1.043]	0.969 [0.923, 1.017]	0.982 [0.932, 1.035]
5+	0.986 [0.936, 1.038]	0.999 [0.951, 1.049]	0.990 [0.941, 1.041]	0.986 [0.933, 1.043]	0.995 [0.937, 1.056]
Woman owns house/land
Does not possess	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
Possesses	0.954* [0.917, 0.993]	0.928*** [0.896, 0.961]	0.975 [0.941, 1.011]	1.029 [0.988, 1.072]	1.047* [1.001, 1.095]
Residence
Rural	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref	Ref
Urban	0.815*** [0.781, 0.850]	0.868*** [0.834, 0.903]	0.830*** [0.795, 0.866]	0.794*** [0.756, 0.834]	0.801*** [0.757, 0.847]
Country fixed effects	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Decade fixed effects	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
N	316,792	316,783	316,077	301,619	316,416
F	241.7	202.6	257.2	207.8	160.8
p	0	0	0	0	0

Note. Exponentiated coefficients; 95% confidence intervals in brackets.

p < .05, **p< .01, ***p < .001.

Country-Level Analysis

Figure 1 shows the unadjusted odds ratio of the logistic regression model where women’s acceptance of spousal violence was regressed on women’s history of abusive parental relationships. In 26 out of 31 countries, women were significantly more likely to accept partner violence when they saw their father beating their mother. In five countries, there was no significant association.

Figure 1.

Country-level association between women’s history of abusive parental relationship and their attitude to violence: unadjusted odds ratios.

Figure 2 shows the adjusted odds ratio of the logistic regression model. In 22 out of 27 countries, women were significantly more likely to accept domestic violence when they saw their father beating their mother. In five countries, there was no significant association. The adjusted model did not have a sufficient number of multivariate observations in four countries (Bangladesh, Benin, Liberia, and South Africa), and these were thus excluded from the forest plot in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Country-level association between women’s history of abusive parental relationship and their attitude to violence: adjusted odds ratios.

Figure 3 illustrates the acceptance of violence for five reasons, according to which a woman is asked whether wife beating is justified in Asia versus Africa. For all the five factors (refuses to have sex, neglects the children, goes out without telling the husband, burns the food, and argues with him), the percentage of acceptance of violence among African nations is found to be higher compared to Asian nations, except for the factor burns the food, where the acceptance of violence by women in Asian countries is higher than by women in African countries.

Figure 3.

Women’s attitude toward intimate partner violence.

Effect of Interparental Abuse on Individual Components of Acceptance of Spousal Violence

Relative to the woman who did not experience interparental abuse, a woman who experienced interparental violence in her childhood was significantly more likely to justify violence if she goes out without telling husband (OR = 1.49, 95% CI [1.45, 1.54], p < .001), neglects children (OR = 1.53, 95% CI [1.49, 1.58], p < .001), argues with husband (OR = 1.49, 95% CI [1.45, 1.53], p < .001), refuses sex with husband (OR = 1.35, 95% CI [1.31, 1.39], p < .001), and burns food (OR = 1.36, 95% CI [1.31, 1.41], p < .001) (Table 3).

Discussion

The most important finding of this study from the multivariate logistic regression model is that the odds of accepting the spousal violence are 1.62 times higher for the women who witnessed their fathers beat their mothers in their childhood than those whose fathers did not beat their mothers. The way through which violence becomes transmitted from generation to generation is well captured by the social learning theory and is demonstrated by our results. The reason why women accept spousal violence when they witness their parents abusing each other in their childhood, according to the social learning theory, is because the children internalize the family values when they become adults and behave accordingly. An individual thus learns by observing the relationship between his/her parents, and if he/she witnesses interparental violence and begins to view that it is normal to use violence or to be a victim of violence, this mainly leads to an increase in the attitudinal acceptance of violence. Another possible explanation is the increased shame sensitivity or proneness when a person is exposed to humiliation as an adult. When this happens, the person is reminded of being a victim of violence in childhood and reacts with bypassed shame, where aggression/anger, which is a less painful emotion, is used as a protective emotion for the psyche. Therefore, such a person uses violence mostly in situations when he/she is reliving his/her painful experiences (Bandura, 1973; Scheff, 1979).

In addition to women’s experience of interparental abuse, the only factor associated with higher odds of acceptance of violence was, counterintuitively, women’s employment status. Our findings are in line with some single country analyses by Yount and Carrera (2006), when women experienced greater domestic violence when they witnessed their mothers experiencing domestic violence. However, this study focused on the experience of domestic violence rather than acceptance. This can be explained in the context of the male backlash hypothesis, as posited by Moore et al. (2021).

With a decrease in gender inequality in a country, males may try to find ways to reaffirm their fading patriarchal control and counter the improved status of working women by using violence. Women may thus become more accomodating of spousal violence, especially when men use psychological violence to exert their authority. A contracting gender gap as women overcome their traditional gender role assignments and join the workforce serves as a threat for men and leads to this “backlash effect” (Xie et al., 2012). Moreover, secondary and higher education were found to be significantly associated with acceptance of IPV, as shown in Table 3. This again may be explained in light of the male backlash hypothesis, with women gaining higher education becoming a threat to the cultural norms of society. Educated and employed women are thus exposed to violence because some cultures and societies have stratified men and women in gender-specific roles and norms (Thind et al., 2008). Table 3 also shows that the experience of interparental abuse predisposes women to accept partner violence for a larger number of reasons, such as neglecting children, burning food, etc. This indicates that witnessing interparental abuse also impacts the severity of the acceptance of IPV for women in their relationships and increases their threshold for acceptance of violence, thereby illustrating lasting psychological damage for them.

Regarding the sociocultural differences between Africa and Asia, we found that Asian women were significantly more likely to accept partner violence than African women (Model 2 in Table 3). Comparing the Asian and African women with respect to the precise reasons for justifying partner violence reveals some interesting patterns. As shown in Figure 3, acceptance of violence among African women is higher compared with Asian women on all factors. The only exception is the case of the burning of food. Asian women were more willing than their African counterparts to justify partner violence if they burned food. This may reflect a major difference in African and Asian cultural values. Studies find that in many countries, women eat last and least (https://actionagainsthunger.ca/violence-against-women-is-also-eating-last-and-least/). The husband or intimate partner is usually served food first in Asian and typically South Asian cultural contexts (Hathi et al., 2021). Cooking and serving good food is generally considered the wife’s primary duty in most Asian countries as part of the gendered roles in society. Hence, when women burn food, they are usually the center of criticism by their husbands and family members, such as the in-laws in joint family systems. Additionally, women themselves pay a lot of attention to ensuring the food they cook is of good taste and quality. Therefore, these cultural norms in Asia might reflect why women accept spousal violence if the food is burnt.

There is a discrepancy in the African and Asian attitudes toward IPV with respect to the estimation method. Summary statistics in Table 1 suggest that a larger share of African women was likely to accept IPV than their Asian counterparts. Figure 3 also shows that a larger share of African women justified IPV than their Asian counterparts, except in the food burning subscale in which a larger share of Asian women justified IPV. However, logistic regression suggests that Asian women were more accommodating of IPV. This issue boils down to an old question as to why the coefficient sign in regression reverses when the model is controlled for with additional predictor(s). Existing literature has identified Simpson’s paradox, Lord’s paradox, and suppression effect as possible explanations for the reversal of the sign of the coefficients, but existing literature warns that interpretation of the coefficients needs to follow “causal reasoning,” which, in turn, relies on theory and prior knowledge rather than statistical estimates (Arah, 2008).

It is also intriguing why more African women justify IPV because of refusing sex, neglecting children, going out without telling the spouse, or arguing with the spouse relative to their Asian counterparts (Figure 3). Though no previous study has specifically answered this question, existing literature explains the justification of IPV in terms of cultural and socioeconomic differences. A study in Ghana explores the link between religion (predominantly Christian and Islamic beliefs) and IPV and finds that male supremacy is justified through religion and is routinely reinforced through religious sermons and traditions (Sikweyiya et al., 2020). Sikweyiya et al. (2020) elaborate that some religious teachings emphasize that man is responsible for disciplining his wife if she errs, and some men use such religious teachings as a “license to punish” their partners for different reasons. Cultural traditions across the world have widely different sensitivities toward IPV. A study in the Arab world finds that some acts of violence have the sociocultural sanction and are not even recognized as violence, such as domestic violence, female genital mutilation, marital rape, and underage marriage (Abadeer, 2015). African and Asian attitudes toward IPV may differ with respect to their distinct sociocultural characteristics.

Despite much contradictory evidence about the role of women’s empowerment in shaping their experience of IPV, evidence suggests that women’s empowerment, defined as higher incomes, more options for ending abusive marriages, and greater normative acceptance of women in public spheres, evolves over time in women’s lives and an increased empowerment significantly reduces the risk of IPV (Schuler & Nazneen, 2018). Since women’s education and wealth status play a critical role in shaping their experience of IPV (Mengistu, 2019), relatively better performance of South Asian women on several socioeconomic indicators may explain why they are less likely to justify IPV on different grounds relative to their African counterparts. According to recent estimates (https://databank.worldbank.org/source/gender-statistics), the adolescent fertility rate in South Asia was 22 births per 1,000 women (vs. 98 births in Sub-Saharan Africa). Such a vast difference in the fertility rates is a measure of widely different social norms surrounding women’s role in reproductive decisions, including justification of IPV for refusing sex.

Some other well-being indicators also point to a relatively better situation in South Asia and may explain different attitudes toward IPV. For example, women’s life expectancy at birth was 71.26 years in South Asia (vs. 63.7 in Sub-Saharan Africa). The under-5 female mortality rate in South Asia was 37.6 per 1,000 live births (vs. 67.8 in Sub-Saharan Africa). Maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births in South Asia was 163 (vs. 534 in Sub-Saharan Africa). Female literacy rate (15–24 years) in South Asia was 88.9% (vs. 74.2% in Sub-Saharan Africa), and adult literacy among 15+ years women was 65.6% in South Asia (vs.59.4 in Sub-Saharan Africa). Gross female school enrollment at the tertiary level was 25.3 in South Asia (vs. 9.5 in Sub-Saharan Africa). The share of women engaged in vulnerable employment (as a percentage of total female employment) was 73.7% in South Asia (vs. 80% in Sub-Saharan Africa).

The highest acceptance ratio for partner violence was recorded in Afghanistan, and the lowest was for Mozambique, Malawi, and Nepal. Afghanistan’s historical and cultural characteristics might have resulted in the higher acceptance of spousal violence against women (Samar et al., 2014). Ahmed-Ghosh (2003) provides a comprehensive historical account of Afghan women’s challenges. Historically, two eras in modern Afghan history have shaped women’s socioeconomic status. First, the government of Amanullah 1923 introduced comprehensive reforms to raise, among other things, the women’s socioeconomic status in Afghan society, which faced stiff resistance from conservative sections leading to the end of Amanullah’s reign. Second, the communist-backed Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan took office in Kabul in 1978 and forced an agenda of social change, including empowering women, but this agenda also faced stiff resistance from Mullah and tribal chieftains culminating in the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union and the birth of Mujahideen. In 1989, the Soviets left Afghanistan, and after a protracted civil war, Mujahedeen took over Kabul in 1992. Under the Mujahideen, women were systematically excluded from public space. In 1996, the Taliban took over and made it a central plank of their public policy to control women’s behavior. Samar et al. (2014) argued that following 9/11, Taliban forces capitalized on gender inequality as part of their resistance and cultural ideology, which infringed on women’s fundamental human rights.

The patriarchal norms of Afghanistan assign an inferior position to women in the society and exclude women from the decision-making process at the household level, which in turn normalizes wife beating in Afghanistan (Akbary et al., 2022). Afghan women’s agency has also eroded because Afghanistan has remained a conflict zone marred by wars and armed insurgency. As the women are subjected to rape, intimidation, and forced pregnancies in conflict regions, the culture of violence against women permeates domestic relationships, explaining why there is a high degree of acceptance of domestic abuse against women in Afghanistan (Akbary et al., 2022).

Some factors associated with lower acceptance of spousal violence include women’s empowerment, rich household wealth, increased age of the respondent, and residence in urban areas. Findings from our study confirmed that both individual and other household characteristics also significantly explain women’s acceptance of domestic violence.

Limitations of the Study

This study has some limitations. First, we used observational data, which does not allow causal inference. Even if many theories, including social learning theory, strongly support the hypothesis that children’s experience of witnessing their parents abuse each other shapes their attitude toward IPV as adults, several factors could be confounding this relationship, including social norms, shared family attitudes, media portrayals of IPV and gender roles, and the nature of country-specific socioeconomic and legal institutions. Social taboos involved in reporting IPV incidents may reduce the response rate. Another source of potential bias in the estimates is that the data used in this study is based on the women’s reports. Using alternative information based on male reports of IPV may give widely different insights about the issue of IPV. Future studies may consider comparing the female and male reports of IPV.

Yet another limitation of the study relates to the construction of the outcome variable (women’s acceptance of IPV) and the main explanatory variable of interest (women’s childhood experience of interparental violence). The fact that these factors have been constructed as dichotomous variables has methodological implications. Women’s acceptance of violence may correspond with two extremes of complete acceptance and no acceptance in some cases but may also have several intervening gray areas, with different segments on the spectrum responding differently to the explanatory variables. Similarly, dichotomizing the women’s childhood experience of interparental violence may conceal critical information because witnessing interparental abuse once or twice may shape attitudes toward IPV differently compared to a situation when interparental abuse takes place more frequently and at regular intervals.

Concluding Remarks

The main finding of this study from the multivariate logistic regression model illustrated that the odds of accepting the spousal violence are 1.62 times higher for the women who witnessed their fathers beat their mothers in their childhood than the women who did not witness such interparental abuse.

When violence against women occurs in front of children, children begin to view women as having lower social status who may be humiliated, punished, and coercively controlled. Children may also interpret violence against women as a male privilege, which may, in turn, become a social norm. When this normative world of male privilege is questioned and challenged, and the silence about such violence is broken, children will become less accommodating of violence against women. The community and the media can play a major role in challenging social norms surrounding IPV.

The community needs to step in when children are experiencing interparental violence and make reporting the behavior of abusive parents to authorities more acceptable. It is also important to expand support for the victims of IPV and promote the utilization of available support services. If the women with a history of experiencing interparental violence seek psychological help in time, they would be less likely to accept IPV as adults. Given the children’s susceptibility to developing negative stereotypes about IPV, suitable educational content at the early stages can make the children less accommodating of IPV as perpetrators or victims.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-jiv-10.1177_08862605221123293 – Supplemental material for Does Childhood Experience of Interparental Abuse Shape Women’s Attitude Toward Intimate Partner Violence in Their Adult Life?: Evidence From 31 Developing Countries

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jiv-10.1177_08862605221123293 for Does Childhood Experience of Interparental Abuse Shape Women’s Attitude Toward Intimate Partner Violence in Their Adult Life?: Evidence From 31 Developing Countries by Musferah Mehfooz, Rafi Amir-ud-Din and Sameen Zafar in Journal of Interpersonal Violence

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

ORCID iD

Rafi Amir-ud-Din

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author Biographies

Musferah Mehfooz, PhD, is an Associate Professor (Tenured) in the Department of Humanities at COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus. She has extensively published on issues of religious psychology, spirituality, normative analysis of interfaith dialog, family structures, and terrorism. She is a motivational speaker, and actively participates in the advocacy initiatives for interfaith harmony.

Rafi Amir-ud-Din, PhD (Economics), is an Associate Professor (Tenured) at COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus. He has extensively published on the economic context of gender relations, domestic violence, public health, and poverty. He has contributed two book chapters on the issues of gender-related violence and alternative measures of socioeconomic development. He peer-reviews for several top-notch public health journals.

Sameen Zafar, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Suleman Dawood School of Business at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). She has been associated in a teaching capacity with various universities including the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her main area of specialization is Development Economics. Her research focuses on poverty, gender, and family economics, using quantitative and qualitative methods.

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