Cited by 1,976Child Abuse and TraumaCrime Patterns and InterventionsIntimate Partner and Family Violence

The Cycle of Violence

Widom, Cathy Spatz·1989·Science

Abstract

Despite widespread belief that violence begets violence, methodological problems substantially restrict knowledge of the long-term consequences of childhood victimization. Empirical evidence for this cycle of violence has been examined. Findings from a cohort study show that being abused or neglected as a child increases one's risk for delinquency, adult criminal behavior, and violent criminal behavior. However, the majority of abused and neglected children do not become delinquent, criminal, or violent. Caveats in interpreting these findings and their implications are discussed in this article.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1126/science.2704995

Cites

84 of 84 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Childhood maltreatment is a pleiotropic risk factor influencing multiple pathophysiological pathways and outcomes, including psychiatric disorders, health behaviors, and crime.

    “Third, childhood maltreatment is a pleiotropic risk factor influencing multiple pathophysiological pathways and outcomes [e.g., psychiatric disorders (31), health behaviors (19), and crime (12)].”

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Widom, C. S.
Affiliations
Indiana University Bloomington (US)
Corresponding author
Widom, Cathy Spatz
Venue
Science
Published
1989-04-14
Volume
244
Issue
4901
Pages
160-166
ISSN
  • 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
  • 1095-9203
OpenAlex
W2001533613
Cited by
1,976
References
84
Citations by year
2026: 77 · 2025: 57 · 2024: 67 · 2023: 52 · 2022: 47 · 2021: 57 · 2020: 73 · 2019: 80 · 2018: 60 · 2017: 75 · 2016: 54 · 2015: 83 · 2014: 80 · 2013: 74 · 2012: 92
FWCI
24.14
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Science (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health (2s07rr007031-27)
  • National Center for Research Resources (S07-RR07031)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime Patterns and Interventions
  • Social Sciences › Health › Intimate Partner and Family Violence
Keywords
cycle of violence, child victimization, child abuse, child neglect, juvenile delinquency, violent crime, long-term effects of abuse, cohort studies
MeSH terms
Child Abuse, Child Abuse, Sexual, Crime, Humans, Infant, Juvenile Delinquency, United States, Violence

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review