Domestic violence is a repetitive pattern of aggressive behavior from one partner to an individual usually done to gain influence and rule over the other. This violence can take several aggressive forms such as emotional, psychological, or physical (Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) | Domestic Violence, 2023). On most occasions, domestic violence is done by a male who victimizes a woman who may have children (Statistics, 2020). Therefore, children may also become victims or witnesses of domestic violence (DV). I have personally witnessed DV in my home in middle school. I began to develop anxiety, depression, isolation, and eating problems. Therefore, it is important to note the significance of the effects that DV or intimate partner violence may have on children’s psychological, socio-emotional, physical, and behavioral development. Past research has shown that DV may greatly impair the long-term development of children (Almis et al., 2020). I believe that the secondary data I review will support the idea that DV at home significantly affects a child or teenager’s development such as experiencing depression, anxiety, and difficulty navigating life through the use of abusing drugs. This research is conducted to shed light on the need for and to stop DV in order for children to feel safe and live a life without barriers in connection to violence. This will be done by analyzing cross-cultural data, primarily from Latin America and The U.S. by reviewing the most significant effects across cultures. Keywords: Domestic violence, intimate partner violence, development, children, adolescents, Latin America.

Bullying is a type of aggression characterized by the repeated and coercive use of power in peer groups. Contrary to previous beliefs, children who go down the path of becoming bullies don’t all exhibit the same etiology (Marini et al. 2010). Individual temperamental factors can predict physical and social aggression, and it is important to understand which of these are significant in order to intervene before aggressive behavior can begin. The current study seeks to answer the following: what factors predict the likelihood of being nominated as a physical or social bully by your peers? Participants included 830 sixth and ninth graders recruited from public schools located in the Southeastern United States. They were asked to nominate three peers each for the categories of a social (“This person gossips and says things about others. This person is good at causing people to get mad at each other and often leaves others out”) and physical bully (“Bullies others…this person is often hurting or picking on others by pushing or hitting them”). Participants also completed a questionnaire that measured subscales of temperament. Regression analyses were done to examine whether the subscales of temperament related to nominations as a social or physical bully. The results suggest that fear and high pleasure-seeking were positively associated, while pleasure sensitivity and shyness were negatively associated as predictors of physical bullying. Similarly, shyness was negatively associated as a predictor of social bullying.

Bullying is a widely recognized occurrence at middle and high schools (Shin, 2019). However, the role a child takes in bullying events (i.e., the perpetrator, the victimized, or the bystander) can be dependent on the strength of their familial relationships (Moral and Ovejero, 2021). We examined the role of the family in evaluations of and responses to dyadic bullying for adolescents. We recruited 896 participants from public schools from grades 6 (N = 450) and 9 (N = 446). Participants completed an online survey that asked them to evaluate multiple dyadic aggression scenarios. Regression analyses revealed that positive familial relationships (unstandardized beta = -.369, standardized beta = -.209, p = <.001) were related to judging the bullying as less acceptable. Students who reported high family management were more likely to initiate active interventions. Further, females and younger students were less likely to view aggressive acts as acceptable and black students were more likely to practice inactive intervention methods. Findings suggest that bullying intervention programs should give more consideration to parent-child relationships.