Using data from a diverse sample of 581 families living in predominantly low-income rural communities the current study sought to investigate the longitudinal associations among father-perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV) and child-directed physical aggression perpetrated by the mother. influence of IPV on child outcomes (Cox & Paley 1997 Krishnakumar & Buehler 2000 Consistent with this idea recent work suggests that there is substantial co-occurrence of A66 IPV and child abuse (Jouriles et al. 2008 Knickerbocker Heyman Slep Jouriles & McDonald 2007 such that many children living in actually violent homes are also being actually abused themselves (Holt Buckley & Whelen 2008 Although the focus of the current study is usually on child-directed physical aggression (versus abusive parenting behaviors) less A66 severe forms of A66 physical aggression including spanking and corporal punishment also have been associated with children’s behavior problems (Berlin et al. 2009 Gershoff 2002 McLoyd & Smith 2002 Straus & Stewart 1999 For example in her meta-analysis of 88 studies that examined the effects of corporal punishment on children’s behaviors and experiences Gershoff (2002) found that corporal punishment was associated with 11 dimensions of children’s short- and long-term functioning including increased aggression and mental health problems. Despite recognition that IPV and child-directed physical aggression cooccur and can each have substantial negative effects on children’s development few studies to date have simultaneously considered the influence of both of these types of family violence on child outcomes or their bidirectional associations over time (Levendosky Bogat & von Vision 2007 Slep & O’Leary 2001 Bidirectional Associations Between IPV and LEIF2C1 Child-Directed Physical Aggression Although most of the extant literature examining parenting in the context of IPV has focused on the unidirectional effect of IPV on parenting (or We hypothesized that higher levels of father-perpetrated IPV assessed when the child was 36-months-old would be associated with increases in maternal physical aggression directed toward the child at 60 months of age and that higher levels of maternal physical aggression directed toward the child at 36 months of age would be associated with increases in father-perpetrated IPV assessed when the child was 60 months aged. We hypothesized that both types of violence would contribute to children’s behavior problems; however due to the inconsistency of findings in the extant literature no hypotheses were made about the relative influence of these types of physical aggression. It is important to note that the current study was limited to only two types of physical aggression that may be occurring in homes with young children. As the goal of the current study was to empirically investigate whether there were bidirectional relations between multiple types of family violence (and not necessarily to characterize the relations among all types of family violence) we chose to focus on two types of family violence that may be particularly A66 salient for families with young children. We selected maternal child-directed physical aggression both because mothers are typically A66 the primary caregivers of young children (making their parenting behaviors particularly important for children’s development; Hofferth Stueve Pleck Bianchi & Sayer 2002 Pleck & Masciadrelli 2004 A66 and because there is a large literature demonstrating that maternal parenting behaviors impact children’s behavioral development (Baumrind 1993 Campbell 1995 Maccoby & Martin 1983 For the second type of family violence we were interested in examining a form of family violence that may be an important contributor to maternal child-directed physical aggression. We therefore selected father- perpetrated IPV largely because the vast majority of literature linking IPV and maternal parenting behaviors has focused exclusively on father-perpetrated IPV (e.g. Huang Wang & Warrener 2010 Levendosky & Graham-Bermann 2001 Levendosky Huth-Bocks Shapiro & Semel 2003 Because these are only two of the many types of family violence that may be occurring in families with young children the reader is reminded that this investigation is purely meant as an empirical exploration of whether different forms of family violence impact one another over time (a research question that thus far has been underexplored in the family violence literature) and that the results should be interpreted cautiously as a more holistic approach to examining the interrelations between various types of family violence might yield different results. Method Participants The participants in this study were a subsample of The Family Life.