Gender, Provocation, and Intimate Partner Aggression

Author： Felson Richard B. Savolainen Jukka Hughes Lorine A. Ellonen Noora

ISSN： 1946-6560

Source： Partner Abuse, Vol.6, Iss.2, 2015-04, pp. : 180-196

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Abstract

The fact that men tend to be more aggressive than women implies that they require less provocation to assault their partners. However, men may require more provocation to overcome normative constraints against harming women. This research examined the implications of these offsetting processes using data from a survey of 13,459 Finnish adolescents in 6th- and 9th-grade classrooms (ages 12–15 years). The youth served as informants regarding their parents' aggressive behavior toward each other. Parents' abusive behavior toward the reporting child was used as an indicator of aggressive tendencies outside the intimate partner relationship. We found the association between child abuse and intimate partner victimization to be stronger among mothers than fathers, which suggests that men require more, not less, provocation to attack their partners. The link between aggression toward partners and abuse of children also was stronger for female offenders. Women's more consistent offending also suggests that aggressive men are inhibited about assaulting their female partners. Overall, findings suggest that inhibitions related to the victim's gender have a stronger effect on heterosexual conflicts than gender differences in the tendency to offend.