Precursors and correlates of women’s violence: Childhood abuse traumatization, victimization of women, avoidance coping and psychological symptoms

Path modeling assessed (a) the influence of child abuse traumatization on women’s use of violence and their experiences of being victimized, (b) the association of these three variables to depressive and posttraumatic stress symptoms, and (c) the indirect pathways from women using violence and their being victimized to psychological symptoms through avoidance coping. Among 108 primarily African American women recruited from the community who used violence with a male partner, women’s use of violence, but not their experiences of being victimized, was predicted by child abuse traumatization. Women’s use of violence did not directly or indirectly predict symptomatology. In contrast, child abuse traumatization and women’s experiences of being victimized were predictive of both depressive and posttraumatic stress symptoms, and being victimized also was related indirectly to depressive symptoms through avoidance coping. Theory that advances the understanding of women’s use of violence in intimate relationships suggests that it should be investigated in a relational context (Swan & Snow, in press), because it is in these same relationships that women are victimized by their partners. A high correlation between women’s use of violence and their being victimized is not uncommon, especially among community samples (John