Family Violence

Family Violence Introduction As the nature of the family has change in the past century, the problem of family violence has also become more pronounced.  Today, it is more common to find mixed families, single-parent families, and families where substance abuse and mental health issues are major problems (Lee, Lincoln).  However, because of the nature of family violence, much of it goes unreported.  Hermann notes that family violence is one of the most prevalent forms of interpersonal violence, with women and children often being the victims of reported instances of this type of crime.

But as Lee and Lincoln point out, women and children are not the only victims of family violence:  “males are subject to all forms of domestic abuse and yet their victimization receives scant attention” (233).  For this reason, family violence is often a hidden crime, as statistics only show those cases that are reported and not those that happen but go unreported.  Because of the wide ranging nature of family violence, which can extend from minor abuse to major violence and murder, there is a great deal of leeway in terms of what is meant when one discusses the issue of family violence.  This paper will describe what family violence means today and what is known about it.

Definition of Family Violence Sexual abuse is often associated with family violence (Hermann)—but it is by no means the only form of family violence that occurs today.  Family violence can occur against young and old, male and female.  It can take the form of child abuse, domestic assault, intimate partner violence, and elder abuse.  Family violence may be contained in the family, but it might also spill out into the community and lead to violence in schools; it also spans cultures and socio-economic conditions (Zhu, Chan, Chen).  Family violence can be physical or mental, emotional and economical.  It can even be spiritual and legal.  Family violence is any type of abuse perpetrated by a family member towards another.  A violent assault, an emotionally abusive partner, economic abuse—such as stealing funds from a partner or from a grandparent or parent who is elderly and unable to address the situation; spiritual abuse—such as using one’s religion to manipulate the person, or ridiculing the person for his or her spiritual beliefs; or exploiting the law for the purposes of disempowering a family member—all of these are examples of family violence in today’s day and age.

Why Family Violence is So Prevalent The family unit used to be considered, traditionally, the building block of society—but along the way in the 20th century social mores and cultural norms changed and the meaning of family underwent an enormous shift.  Instead of family and the notion of family values being upheld as something pivotal in society and important for communities and individuals alike, family began to be seen as something oppressive and disconcerting.  The idea of having children after marriage became something extra—as procreation and sexual activity were divided from one another thanks to contraception (Rainwater), and the need to link marriage with having a growing family became less common as contraception and family planning became more common.  Traditionally, large families were the norm and family values were a staple of large families as everyone had to take a role to make sure the family unit survived.   America, however, went through many changes over the course of the 20th century.  It took part in two World Wars and following the second it experienced a sexual and socio-political revolution that began in the 1960s at the same time that the Women’s Movement began under the leadership of women like Betty Friedan, who wrote The Feminine Mystique in the 1960s.  Friedan lamented being a housewife and viewed the domestic duties that women were expected to perform as part of the cultural norm as oppressive and slavish.  She stated in her book, “We have made woman a sex creature…She has no identity except as a wife and mother.  She does not know who she is herself.  She waits all day for her husband to come home at night to make her feel alive.  And now it is the husband who is not interested.  It is terrible for the women, to lie there, night after night, waiting for her husband to make her feel alive” (29).  She went on to talk about the chains of the domestic sphere as being mental chains that enslaved women everywhere and that women had just as much right to leave the home and work in the workplace as men did.  In doing so, however, she fundamentally altered the balance that existed:  with two parents in the workplace it meant that the situation for the children at home would change.  There would be a need for more daycare.

There would be less parental supervision.  There would be more stress for the mother, often still expected to carry on two roles at once—that of homemaker and breadwinner.

The shift that Feminism caused in the social fabric was significant:  women no longer saw themselves exclusively as having an important domestic part to play, and this coincided with the dwindling family size as more people embraced birth control.  With fewer children to care for, the significance of the family and its value in society began to be diminished:  what mattered to people was that they go out and get jobs and earn money and become independent.  Independence, freedom, self-sufficiency—these were the things that mattered to people in the latter half of the 20th century.  Soon divorce rates began to skyrocket as there was no reason for mothers or fathers to be attached to the family any longer as the family’s significance and worth in society was being obscured by revolutionary social doctrines.

As a result, the family became somewhat destabilized, and many people lost a sense of the kind of self-sacrifice and duty and virtue required to sustain a family.  Families are not easy to maintain:  they require a great deal of work, and those tasked with raising families must give up time and demonstrate patience and love, as they are forming children and shaping their development in meaningful ways, as Erikson showed in his model of human development (Shriner, Shriner).  Yet, not having received any formation themselves and never having been given an example of the kind of strength of character and principles and values that they need to establish their own families in a strong and fortified manner, many people tend towards self-centered approaches that lead to violence.  They explode on children when children misbehave or because they have no self-control after years of drug or alcohol abuse.  They engage in sexual abuse because they have developed mental health issues that have never been treated.  They attempt to rob their elderly parents or grandparents, for whom they are supposed to be caring yet in their self-centered approach to the family they see only the older person’s money and the fact that they could use it for themselves.  They emotionally abuse others or mock their beliefs because they themselves are filled with anger and hatred and have never attempted to empathize or sympathize with another human being.  Often they are stressed because they themselves have long work hours and little to show for a life spent working for a company that is now on the verge of abandoning its pension commitments.  In short, there are many stressors and factors that drive people to commit family violence, but the main factor is simply that the family is there—like a punching bag to those who have no positive means of coping and no desire to control themselves or show love to others since they themselves are so filled with scorn and pitilessness.  Bills, debts, abandoned dreams, calloused feelings, lack of good habits, poor example set by their own parents, and a loss of cultural and social mores pointing the way towards the value and significance of what it means to have a family—these are all some of the many different factors leading to family violence.

What to Do Family violence, first and.