Theories and Attitudes Explaining Domestic Violence

Introduction

Chapter 3 of Hague and Malos's Domestic Violence: Action for Change is concerned with how explanations of domestic violence relate to the way in which different agencies approach it (Hague and Malos, p. 52). The chapter describes attitudes and explanations across several distinct categories: traditional attitudes, individual pathological models, cycles of violence, biological explanations, socio-structural explanations, moralist explanations, and feminist explanations (Hague and Malos, pp. 52–63). After presenting these frameworks, the chapter concludes by examining the typical responses to domestic violence that arise from each set of attitudes and explanations (Hague and Malos, pp. 62–63).

Traditional Attitudes and Victim Blaming

Traditional attitudes have held that domestic violence is a private affair between husband and wife, and that no one should interfere unless the violence is constant and results in serious, visible injury to the woman or child (Hague and Malos, pp. 52–54). The historical reaction has been to excuse the violence and blame the victim (Hague and Malos, pp. 52–54). This perspective likely stems from the treatment of women as chattel until relatively recently — a legal and cultural reality that shaped how societies defined the boundaries of acceptable intervention in the home (Hague and Malos, pp. 52–54).

Individual Pathological and Cycle of Violence Models

One explanatory model is based on the idea that the violent individual suffers from a pathological condition that leads to deviance expressed in a violent form (Hague and Malos, pp. 54–55). This model further tends to blame the victim, describing the woman as colluding in the violence because she has somehow failed to resolve her own psychological "issues." For this reason, the household is sometimes referred to as an "abusive family" rather than the focus being placed solely on the perpetrator (Hague and Malos, pp. 54–55).

Another explanation frames domestic violence as a "cycle of violence," suggesting that children who witness abuse simply replicate that behavior in their own adult relationships, thereby perpetuating the cycle across generations (Hague and Malos, pp. 55–56). However, this explanation fails to account for the fact that 80% of abused children do not go on to become abusers themselves — a significant empirical gap that undermines the theory's explanatory power (Hague and Malos, pp. 55–56).

Biological and Socio-Structural Explanations

Biological explanations for domestic violence include both biochemical and genetic arguments (Hague and Malos, pp. 56–57). A commonly cited example is the claim that men are violent or aggressive due to testosterone levels. According to Hague and Malos, however, little systematic research has been conducted to support this claim. Medicobiological explanations also exist, attributing violence to hormonal or chemical imbalances and addictions. Additionally, some sociological accounts argue that domestic violence results from "genetic imperatives" — an evolutionary framing that similarly deflects responsibility from the individual perpetrator (Hague and Malos, pp. 56–57). Critically, all of these biological explanations share a common failing: they tend to excuse the violence and do nothing to support the woman experiencing abuse.

Socio-structural explanations, by contrast, assume that domestic violence results from societal stressors such as job loss, poverty, inadequate housing, and other material pressures (Hague and Malos, p. 58). Yet this framework fails to explain why domestic violence is almost always perpetrated by men against women, nor why it occurs across all social classes regardless of economic circumstance (Hague and Malos, p. 58). The persistence of gender-based violence across socioeconomic groups is a fundamental challenge to purely structural accounts.