More and more we’re able to show a strong connection between the experience children have with bullying and how it impacts them later in life. We’ve written about this issue before at Who Is Likely to Become a Bully, a Victim, or Both? and at Cyberbullying and Complex PTSD.
The peer-reviewed Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine published a study in June 2011 titled School Bullying Perpetration and Other Childhood Risk Factors as Predictors of Adult Intimate Partner Perpetration in which it found that:
“The present study indicates that bullying peers in school as a child, especially frequent bullying perpetration, is associated with increased risk for men’s perpetration of IPV [intimate-partner violence] as an adult. The effect remains strong after controlling for common prior risk factors for both bullying and IPV perpetration.”
Since we know that childhood bullying is not limited to in-person attacks, but has a very strong online component, it will be interesting to see a future study about the correlation between cyberbullying and intimate-partner violence.