Laying Down the Family Burden: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Resilience in the Midst of Family Violence

Abstract

Questionnaire data from a cross-sectional study of a randomly selected sample of 5,149 middle-school students from four EU countries (Austria, Germany, Slovenia, and Spain) were used to explore the effects of family violence burden level, structural and procedural risk and protective factors, and personal characteristics on adolescents who are resilient to depression and aggression despite being exposed to domestic violence. Using logistic regression to identify resilience characteristics, our results indicate that structural risks like one's sex, migration experience, and socioeconomic status were not predictive of either family violence burden levels or resilience. Rather, nonresilience to family violence is derived from a combination of negative experiences with high levels of family violence in conjunction with inconsistent parenting, verbally aggressive teachers, alcohol and drug misuse and experiences of indirect aggression with peers. Overall, negative factors outweigh positive factors and play a greater role in determining the resilience level that a young person achieves. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.