(Why) do victims become perpetrators? Intergenerational transmission of parental violence in a representative German sample.

Child maltreatment can severely impair children's emotional and physical well-being as well as their individual development across the life span. In 2011, the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (Germany), conducted a nationally representative victim survey on diverse forms of victimizations (N = 11,428). Among other things, experienced and exerted parental violence as well as participants' knowledge regarding the abolition of the parental right of corporal punishment were assessed. Apart from providing current estimates of the prevalence of experienced and exerted parental violence in Germany, we identified specific risk markers for the intergenerational transmission of parental violence. In summary, 52.6% of the participants reported experiences of at least one incident of at least minor parental violence until the age of 16 years, and 22.9% had exerted at least once at least one act of minor violence against their own children. Nonparametric conditional inference tree analyses revealed experienced parental violence as the most important risk marker for exerting parental violence. Furthermore, the number of children currently cared for, parental age, and origin as well as knowledge about the current legal situation regarding corporal punishment were significantly associated with exerting parental violence. For individuals without a history of parental violence, lack of experienced parental warmth and an age between 33 and 40 years increased the risk of exerting parental violence. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for designing effective prevention and intervention strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record