Violent teens - male and female - make violent partners

Adolescents who are violent during their teenage years are significantly more likely than other young adults to be violent towards their partners later on, says this report in Medical News Today on a new University of Washington study.

In the study, nearly twice as many women as men said they perpetrated domestic violence in the past year including kicking, biting or punching their partner, threatening to hit or throw something at their partner, and pushing, grabbing or shoving their partner.

While there is growing recognition that women as well as men perpetrate domestic violence, (see Domestic abuse affects almost one fifth of men, research suggests) the proportion in this study is startlingly high and I must say I would like to see a closer examination of it. It's also worrying given reports of increasing violence by 'girl gangs' whose members will later, in some cases, bring their violence into their homes.

However, the study underlines the importance of working with violent teenagers, male and female, to encourage them to change their behaviour and not just to wait for them to grow out of it.....