Family Violence in America: Part 4

First Memory of Violence

The first question of the interview is concerned with the first encounter of violence in the home or between family members and asks further for a detailed description of the situation. The interviewee’s answers differ considerably and thereby indicate the individual’s own definition and perception of violence. What they have in common is that they all describe instances from their childhood when they were living together with their parents and siblings. Interviewee 1 answers the first question, first of all by stating “Uhm, that's a tough one,” seemingly having difficulties to remember the first instance of violence, and then goes on to labeling the violence she experienced. She mentions alcohol abuse in her family, emotional and verbal abuse. She describes the situation in her home as a child as follows:

it's kind of a hard thing to think about because most of my recollections from my childhood are centered around that alcoholism and there wasn't – from what I could pick on as a younger child – emotional abuse or anything to that effect, it was just a lot of anxiety and stress from my dad's alcoholism.

Her initial answer to the first memory of violence focuses on her father’s alcoholism and that it made her feel anxious most of the time. She further describes that she would not label it abuse but then adds that she, as an adult, has learned about the different types of abuse and from retrospect she could recall situations where there was verbal abuse. When I asked her to describe forms of verbal abuse at home she describes a situation that occurred regularly, when the family was sitting together at the dinner table. Whenever her father disliked the dinner her mother prepared, he would say, for example “this is disgusting, I'm not eating it.” Her mother always brought new food when the father expressed his discontent with the meal and even today her father complains about it and her mother still “caters to that reaction.” Even though the interviewee does not talk about this situation specifically as the first memory of violence, this form of verbal insult is the first situation she describes in the interview.Interviewee 2 replies to the first question with a memory from her childhood when she was three years old and witnessed the aftermath of a violent scene between her parents. She was not in the same room as her parents but recalls hearing them yelling at each other and then coming into the kitchen, where her parents had been fighting. “I remember coming to the top of the basement stairs and my dad was (.) like stomping out of the kitchen into the other room and I looked into the kitchen and my mom was standing at the counter and blood was pouring out of her face.” Later, when her mother and sister told her grandmother about what had happened, she learned about what had initiated the fight between her parents. Her mother and her sister were talking in the kitchen, and her father seemingly thought they were fighting. Her mother tossed half a lemon at him and assured him that her sister was only telling her about a TV show. Her father came up to her mother and “punched her in the face and had broken her nose and uhm (..) I remember later my grandmother taking care of my mother and telling her she shouldn't make my father mad like that. And my mother didn't go to the doctor.” Her father had left the house and her sister got into the car and drove to their grandmother’s house for help. She describes feelings of being helpless and being terrified of her father and that she had always been terrified of him. Her mother had never addressed these instances with her. “[S]he never talked about it, never said "everything's fine," never said anything, it was like it just never happened. Within a couple of hours, we went back to normal.” The interviewee describes many details and her family’s reactions from this first memory of physical violence in her home, even though she was only three years old. This indicates that this first memory of violence is also a very strong memory for her and that this might not have been the first time she talked about this particular incident.

I remember coming to the top of the basement stairs and my dad was like stomping out of the kitchen into the other room and I looked into the kitchen and my mom was standing at the counter and blood was pouring out of her face.

The third interviewee describes a fight between her parents as her first memory of violence in the home as well. She was in second or third grade at the time and does not remember what the fight was about but recalls how it ended. “[M]y dad owns a lot of guns, and for some reason his way of ending the fight was shooting a hole through our wall in the living room.” This particular instance is isolated, as this is the only situation the interviewee remembers where a gun was involved in a fight, but her father had punched holes in the wall as well, she says. She cannot remember her mother’s reaction when the gun was fired but remembers that she herself tried to protect her younger brother by taking him to another room and as far away from the father as possible. She adds that today her mother mostly cries when she has a fight with her father.

My dad owns a lot of guns, and for some reason his way of ending the fight was shooting a hole through our wall in the living room.

The descriptions of the first memory of violence differ considerably. For one interviewee, her father’s alcoholism itself is a form of violence, especially the emotional impact it had on her and her family. She also mentions verbal abuse as an early memory that has been always an issue at her house. The two other interviewees describe rather physically violent acts, even though they themselves had not been hurt. In interviewee 3’s first memory no one was hurt in the situation where father shot a gun in the house; in interviewee 2’s first memory, her mother had been physically hurt by her father but not herself.Catch up on @b-flat's research here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.