Violence in the Family - 11/14/01 Outside of war and riots, the home is the most violent location American society.
Violence in Dating Relationships -
Dating violence crosses lines of race, ethnicity, age, class and sexual orientation. Research has shown that as many as 3/4 of all college students may have experience violence in a current or past dating situation.
Sexual coercion - The prevalence of sexual coercion in dating relationships is well documented. Studies have found that as many as one in three women engage in unwanted sexual activities because of pressure from dating partners. Peer pressure - about a quarter of both men and women cite peer pressure as one of the main reasons they had intercourse for the first time when they didn't want it.
Date Rape - Forcible rape remains the most frequently committed but least reported violent crime in American today. Studies consistently show that close to 60% of college-aged women have been sexually assaulted after the age of 14. 84% of college women who had been the victims of rape or attempted rape knew their attackers, and 57% were dating their attackers at the time.
Low conviction rates - 1 in 150 suspected rapists is even found guilty. A couple of issues - the victim have to prove their innocence. The definition or rape is based on a traditional model of sexual intercourse (penile-vaginal penetration). Victims must provide some evidence that they were "unwilling" and tried to resist.
Excusing the rapist - Cultural norms and beliefs about male sexuality also influence our understanding of sexual coercion and rape in dating relationships. One such belief is that men's sexual urges are uncontrollable. Men are frequently portrayed as overwhelmingly sexual beings who, once aroused, are compelled by forces beyond their control to seek sexual gratification.
Blaming the victim -
Related to this belief in uncontrollable male sexuality is the belief that women are ultimately responsible for men's sexual behavior. That is, women "do something to " men that arouse their sexuality and men cannot resist. A woman who is raped is therefore held responsible for failing to control the man's behavior.
Domestic Violence can be studied as a social rather than a personal problem
Locating the cause of the behavior in the individual. A sexual double standard tends to naturalize men’s sexually aggressive behavior and to foster beliefs about women’s responsibility for male violence, e.g. the cause of violence can be located in women’s self-esteem, the wife’s psychiatric instability, her belittling and tormenting behavior or her failure to adopt her wifely role.
Gelles “through a Sociological Lens” Social Structure and family Violence”
Structure of the Family as a social institution
Time at risk - The ratio of time spent interacting with family members exceeds the ratio of time spent interacting with others - the ration varies depending on the stage in the family life cycle.
Range of activities and interests - interactions range over a much wider spectrum of activities than does nonfamilial interaction.
Intensity of involvement - The quality of family interaction is different than non-family interaction.
Impinging activities -Many interactions in the family are inherently conflict structured and have a "zero-sum" aspect. (Winners and losers in the interaction).
Right of influence. - Belonging to a family carries with it the implicit right to influence the values, attitudes, and behaviors of other family members.
Family life contains endless sources of stress. Research indicates that the likelihood of domestic violence increases with the number of stressful events that a family experiences
Age and sex differences- rates of domestic violence (both victimization and offending) are highest for those between the ages of 18 and 30 years.
The data on physical abuse indicates that females are nearly as, or more, likely than males to assault and abuse their children physically. When level of responsibility for childcare is controlled - males are actually more likely to be physical abusers than are females
Ascribed roles (men are dominant; women are passive)
Privacy - Where privacy is high, the degree of social control is low.
Involuntary membership - Families are exclusive organizations. Birth relationships are involuntary and cannot be terminated. When conflict arises it is not easy to beak off the conflict by fleeing the scene or resigning from the group.
Extensive knowledge of social biographies: Know how to push each other's buttons.
Linda Gordon - perceptions of family violence are always influenced by broader historical and political conditions. Our ideas about what constitutes unacceptable intimate violence and how we should respond to it are linked to the political moods that characterize our historical era. For instance, over the past century the women ‘s rights movement has been most influential in confronting and publicizing family violence and demanding that action be taken against it. Historically, concern with family violence grown when feminism was strong and has receded when feminism was weak. Similarly, during conservative periods, intimate violence tends to be explained in terms of the individual psychologies of batterers and victims. When progressive political attitudes prevail, explanations tend to revolve around broader social conditions, such as economic uncertainty and changing power relationships in families or in society as a whole.
Families in a violent society.
Violence is promoted institutionally in a number of ways: Historically, violence between family members has been legitimized by the law (example, the “rule of thumb” where a husband could beat his wife legally with a rod no bigger than the circumference of his thumb).
Violence in the media - television and movies -many are concerned that violence on television and in movies desensitizes viewers to violence and provides models for impressionable youth. Pornography is believed to encourage male dominance.
Customs and beliefs - many customs and beliefs support violence. Males are socialized to be dominant (good for boys to have fights. Hitting children is considered normal discipline in our society.
Spouse Abuse - while wife abuse is assumed to be fairly common, accurate data are impossible to obtain due to lack of witnesses, fear of reporting, and unresponsiveness within the legal system.
Conditions that favor wife abuse -
1. Economic conditions -battered women tend to be found in low-income households.
2. Race and ethnicity - people of color are over represented in the abuser and abused categories, a situation that may be more indicative of societal racism than actual rates of abuse. (These acts are more likely to receive official intervention).
3. Verbal aggression- verbally aggressive couples are prone to physical violence, a finding that runs counter to the catharsis hypothesis that says it is better to release feelings.
4. Alcohol abuse - excessive alcohol use is the most common trait associated with wife abuse.
5. Family history of abuse - a violent family or origin is a major contributing factor to being violent in a family situation.
Why do some wives remain in the abusive situation?
1. Learned helplessness - refers to a learned passivity and resignation as a result of being trapped by circumstances.
2. Self-blame - seeing themselves as the source of the problem is one way women come to terms with what may seem an option less situation.
3. Other deterrents to leaving - women may not leave abusive relationships because of economic concerns, increased danger to her and her children, staying with the idea that it is in the best interests of the child.
4. Social exchange theory - provides the most powerful reasons why women stay in abusive relationships, i.e. Dependence.
Many people believe that battered women can “simply leave” a relationship. More than 1/3 felt that a battered woman is at least partially responsible for the beating she suffers and if she doesn’t leave she must be either masochistic or emotionally disturbed.
Kathleen Ferraro and John Johnson - many women in their study stayed to help their “troubled’ partners return to their “normal” nonabusive selves. Other claimed that their abusive partners were “sick” and that their actions were beyond their control; in other words, their partners were also victims.
Lack of institutional support. - Throughout the years, hospital personnel, police and courts have been unsympathetic to the plight of battered women.
Women who kill their abusers. About 750 battered women kill their abusers each year. Up until 1989 women could not make a “self-defense plea’ because most murders occur outside of a direct confrontation. For a self-defense plea there must be imminent threat to her life. Some states stipulate that people in harmful situations first have a “duty to retreat”. That is as an alternative to using force, they must first attempt to escape from the situation. Only when no such opportunity exists can they legally use lethal force. Finally, self-defense requires that the victim respond with “proportional” force.
Battered woman syndrome was first used in the 1980s as a defense for murder.
Contrary to popular belief, the rate of wife-to-husband violence is slightly higher than the rate of husband-tow-wife violence. But because violence directed toward women tends to be more severe and more difficult to escape, women clearly are disproportionate victims of dangerous or life-threatening domestic violence. In fact, violence in the household represents the single largest cause of injury to women in the United States today.
Domestic violence represents 40% of female homicides in this country. Female homicide victims are 9 times more likely to have been killed by a husband, ex-husband, or boyfriend than male homicide victims are to have been killed by a wife, ex-wife or girlfriend.
“Mutual combat” Thesis – Strauss and other researchers: four reasons why women might be as violent as men: (a) Battered women may incorporate violence in their own behavioral repertory (b) women may follow the norm of reciprocating violence; (c) the use of violence in one sphere, such as child care, may carry over into interaction with one’s partner; and (d) an implicit norm exists that a woman should use minor violence, such as slapping, on certain occasions.
Dawn Currie - “Violent Men or Violent women? Whose Definition Counts?” Curies show how individual interpretations of abuse influence the results of studies based on self-reports and interviews. Women normalize male violence as “understandable” or “excusable,” a response that conforms to the notion of men as typically aggressive. On the other hand because women are traditionally typified as passive, violent behavior on their part is notable or remarkable although not a serious threat to men.
Most of the data is based on the Conflict Tactics Scale - this is a quantitative survey instrument. Currie’s research is qualitative as well. She asks what meanings do the respondents bring to their accounts of the use of violence?
Critics of the CTS:
Ranking ordering of abuse and its failure to provide a context that allows interpretation of measurements, e.g. verbal aggression is ranked lower than physical aggression. From the perspective of women psychological humiliation and verbal harassment can be more painful than physical assaults and more devastating in their effects.
Second the equivalence of violent acts. The abstraction and rank ordering of these incidents fails to take into account the degree of injury that is sustained. Kicking a man in the shins vs. kicking a pregnant woman in the abdomen. In Currie’s study, eg. Man who checked yes to partner “threw’ something at him (when probed further, it was a stuffed animal).
Third – related to difficulties in making judgements about the effect of violence is the separation of discrete acts from their situational context. Although nobody denies that women use physical violence against male partners, woman abuse researchers maintain that women rarely initiate attacks against their husbands, lovers, dates or cohabiting partners. More typically women’s use of violence is proactive or takes the form of self-defense. The CTS does not allow researchers to identify specific motives for behavior.
Why is this important? Because research is tied to politics and social policy. At stake are women’s claims for equal protection under criminal law, for social services that extend battered women’s options, and for symbolic recognition of women’s right to physical autonomy.
Child Abuse and Neglect - Violence against children by parents is the most prevalent form of family violence.
What is child abuse - difficult to arrive at a widely agreed upon definition of child abuse.
Child abuse - approximately 6.9 million American children are physically abused by their parents or adults caretakers |(using the more abusive forms of violence - kicking, biting, punching, beating, burning, hitting with an object, scalding and threatening with a knife or gun)
Homicide is one of the five leading causes of death for children between 1 and 18 years of age. More than 1,300 a year.
The emergence of child abuse as a social problem. No child abuse laws until the early 1960s. Battered child syndrome became recognized in the early 1960s when pediatric radiologists noticed it.
Between 1976 and 1987 reports of suspected child abuse and neglect increased from a little under 670,000 a year to well over 2 million. Polls today consistently show that Americans rate child abuse as very serious.
Explanations of child abuse.
Most experts agree that individual factors account for only a very small percentage of child abuse cases. Socioeconomic facts - racial differences in domestic violence tend to disappear when parents’ social-class standing is taken into consideration. Wealthier parents, however, might very well be better able to hid abuse.
Gender - men are more likely to be the perpetrators of all forms of domestic violence except child abuse, where women comprise 50% of perpetrators.
Unemployment
Cycle of violence - refers to the tendency for people who are abused as children to grow up to be abusing parents and violent spouses themselves. Roughly 30% of abusive adults were themselves abused as children.
Parental rights and state intervention - most modern child abuse laws are designed to uphold the family’s integrity - that is, keep the family intact by giving abusive parents multiple opportunities to change their ways and retain custody - not to protect children. Although this viewpoint is more and more challenged by states who believe that child protection is more important than family preservation.
Corporal punishment - hitting one’s children “when necessary’ is a cultural norm. The distinction between abusive violence and “corporal punishment” is not always clear. Despite its ubiquity, acceptability and perceived harmlessness, 40 years of research indicate that corporal punishment can have some of the same negative effects on children as child abuse: physical aggression and delinquency.
Elder Abuse - not discussed in Newman. Data indicate that women are the most likely victims of elder abuse. Estimates are from 4% to 10% of the elderly have been abused in a given year - (1.1 million per year). What is elder abuse? - Physical, psychological, material, and drug-related abuse (medicating to control).
The abuse occur in situations in which adult children are overwhelmed by the emotional, physical, and financial strains of caring for a parents
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