Family Violence in America: Part 1

Our contributor @b-flat wrote this research paper for her Master's degree. For her paper, she interviewed three HER contributors about violence in their households. We're so excited to share @b-flat's findings to our followers. Please keep in mind that due to her paper's length, we will post it in several parts.

Introduction

The domestic violence movement started out as a women’s movement in alliance with second-wave feminism in the 1970s in the United States to protect women from male dominance. Women and crisis intervention programs for rape survivors were established and reached a peak by the end of the decade, with 700 shelters listed in national directions. However, the problem of domestic violence was not addressed as such by officials and courts in the United States. Many programs, for example the Family Violence program at LEAA, were ended after being in existence for only a few years, which was also reflected in a societal tendency to “move on” (Blackman 15*). The political New Right, with its opposition to abortion and emphasis on ‘the family,’ ensured that the Carter administration’s efforts to provide federal funding for women’s shelters would not succeed, arguing that the sanctity of the family and marriage would be violated. The first marital rape law that was enacted in Nebraska in 1976 made it illegal for a husband to rape his wife, but it only became a crime in all 50 states in 1993 (Colker 1851-56). Nonetheless, domestic violence is still a major social problem, accounting for 21 percent of all violent victimizations, between the years 2003 and 2012, and remains the leading cause of homicides against women (Buzawa and Buzawa 67).

Domestic violence is still a major social problem, accounting for 21 percent of all violent victimizations

Over the last few decades, scholars have approached the issue of domestic or family violence from various angles and have tried to answer questions regarding demographics of perpetrators and victims, i.e. socioeconomic factors which seem to facilitate the occurrence of violence in the American home. The majority of research, especially on intervention strategies, still focuses on violence against women when studying domestic violence. There is nonetheless a vast body of research focusing on family conflict and or individual pathologies leading to abuse, which is largely independent of the sex of the offender and the victim (Buzawa and Buzawa 63-64). In Behind Closed Doors, Straus et al. ask the question “Who are the Violent Americans?” and try to answer it by finding patterns in the social class, place of residence, religion, race, age, education and income of the violent Americans. Among the “fascinating and unexpected findings” that rates of family violence are evenly distributed across the United States, and that being uneducated does not equal violence in the home. They found that social factors influence whether a member of a family is physically abused (127-51). Most of the research on domestic violence or family violence, also labeled as intimate partner violence (IPV) relies on quantitative data for their analysis. Articles by Markowitz, D’Andrea and Graham-Berman and Witt, which have been published in the Journal of Family Violence, base their findings on official statistical data or their own survey data. However, corresponding findings and theories on domestic violence are few and far between.

They ask “Who are the Violent Americans?” and try to answer it by finding patterns in the social class, place of residence, religion, race, age, education and income of the violent Americans. Among the “fascinating and unexpected findings” that rates of family violence are evenly distributed across the United States, and that being uneducated does not equal violence in the home.

This paper focuses on the broad issue of family violence, which it defines as violence occurring between family members and, or violence occurring in the home which includes IPV. The discussion is based on three qualitative interviews that I conducted with victims of family violence. The focus of these interviews was to gather descriptions of violence that has occurred between family members or in the home. This paper argues that qualitative interviews and the interviewee’s own accounts, which provide a thick description of violence and violent situations, offer a more detailed insight into the dynamics of family violence than quantitative studies. The findings from the interviews are compared with the literature on family violence mentioned above. The following chapter discusses the method and methodology in more detail. Chapter 3 compares definitions of violence from the literature and further discusses the interviewee’s own descriptions of different forms of violence. Chapter 4 discusses the ways in which the interviewees were able to terminate violent relationships.

• * editor's note: her sources will be published with the last post of the series.