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Most parents with maltreatment histories do not become child abusers.

The family cycle of violence is difficult to study across multiple generations.

Agent-based models allow researchers to investigate pathways perpetuating the family cycle of violence.

This post is the second in an occasional series on the family cycle of violence.

In May 2026, we posted "Do Abused Parents Become Child Abusers?" subtitled: "Multiple interacting factors shape the intergenerational cycle of maltreatment." That post is intended to be the foundation for an undetermined number of future blog posts examining the intergenerational transmission of increased risk for maltreatment to the offspring of parents who were maltreated themselves as children. The larger focus of this series is the two-part question: “Can we break the family cycle of violence?” and “If so, how?”

The key points of the earlier post are that the single most powerful risk factor for a child being maltreated is having a parent who was maltreated. Most (~70 percent) parents with child maltreatment histories do not become abusive parents. However, the risk of becoming an abusive parent is 6 to 12 times higher than for parents without a childhood maltreatment history. The mechanisms underlying this increased risk may be indirect (e.g., decreased parental vigilance) or direct (perpetration). This increased risk is a result of multiple, interacting levels of factors (e.g., depression, dissociation, substance abuse, domestic violence, unsafe households, poverty, neighborhood factors, public policies). To be cost-effective, prevention programs must seek to address the most critical shared underlying factors synergistically.

The post also notes that individuals can promote positive social change by openly acknowledging their own and others’ childhood maltreatment, thereby validating survivors, reducing stigma, and keeping public attention focused on this enormous public health problem.

What Are the Critical Factors That Perpetuate Intergenerational Transmission of Risk?

How do we tease out the most critical factors on which to focus the always limited prevention resources? This conundrum is further complicated by the need to follow these multiple interacting factors........

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