Views on Interparental Violence with Relation to Adolescence
Violence and Dating Violence
Rebecca Kilkenny
Introduction
The way two parents or cohabiting adults interact with one another can
leave a lasting impression on an adolescence or child. This impression can
either mold the child or adolescence in the form of a law-abiding citizen, or
it can mold them into a violent individual. Many who have studied this topic
believe that if you are a violent parent that means you take more “Hands Off”
approach to parenting, whereas those who are more “Hands On” and involved in
smaller parts of their children’s lives are typically the non-violent parents.
Other things to take into consideration will be emotional regulation,
relationships with both parents and friends, and attachment security.
Emotional Regulation
The term emotional regulation comes from the emotional security hypothesis
that Davies and Cummings researched in 1994. This hypothesis gives and
explanation for the negative effects surrounding interparental conflict on a
child’s and/or adolescents’ development. Based on this theoretical approach,
if there is ongoing intensive interparental conflict it could lead to emotional
insecurities in the children. This may consequently cause them to display a
higher emotional reactivity, attempts to ineffectively regulate their exposure
to the conflict provided by the parents, as well as developing insecure internal
representations of the interparental relationship. Emotional insecurities can
cause long term damage as to weaken a child’s ability to regulate their negative
emotions. These emotions would be anger, sadness, and fear. The definition for
emotional regulation is the process of initiating, avoiding, inhibiting,
maintaining or modulating the occurrence, form, intensity, or duration of
internal feeling states, emotion-related physiological processes, emotion-
related goals, and the behavioral concomitants of emotion. It has been argued
