DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.   Term Paper ID:28947 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Discusses recent research & studies on subject incl. What triggers domestic violence. Methodology & findings to determine whether immigrant women suffer higher rates of domestic violence.... More...

18 Pages / 4050 Words 16 sources, 29 Citations, APA Format $72.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Discusses recent research & studies on subject incl. What triggers domestic violence. Methodology & findings to determine whether immigrant women suffer higher rates of domestic violence. Paper Introduction: Introduction The issue of domestic violence – always of concern to the victims, some researchers, and some social and women's shelter workers – became an issue of national concern during the O.J. Simpson trial. Just as the Clarence Thomas hearings raised the issue of sexual harassment in places where before it had been ignored, the pictures of a battered and bruised Nicole Brown - pictures that she had made so that if Simpson ever killed her his past violence to her would be known -- gave an unforgettable face to the problem of domestic violence. That case also highlighted some of the complex problems that scholars studying the issue of domestic violence and social workers trying to end the beatings face in their work. This paper examines the recent research done on the subject of domestic violence in gener Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. A womanwho does not speak the ambient language will have even greater barriersthan other women in seeking help. Personal communication.Websdale, N. Why it should be that men who were abused (or witnessed abuse) whenthey themselves vulnerable (because of their young age and their smallsize) should become abusers is not immediately clear. This can come about in several ways. However, even given these substantial caveats about the reliability ofthe data, the research can still be looked to provide verification (ordismissal) of the hypothesis. (2 ). The directors of domestic violence shelters knowfar more about the community that they are dealing with than turns up inofficial reports or statistics, and so I talked to two such directors as asupplement to the information that appears in the literature. 127). Findings The short answer as to whether the hypothesis that immigrant women areat greater risk than non-immigrant women to be the victims of domesticviolence because of the uniquely isolating nature of their situation andthe unique stresses that affect all members of immigrant households is yes. Literature Review We begin a review of the literature on domestic violence with adefinition of the term. 89). The men who are most likely to commit acts of violence against theirpartners are those who have grown up in households in which they eitherwitnessed or were the victims of violence themselves; it does not seem tomake much difference which of these two situations obtained. If one group of researchers and writers on domestic violence havelooked at what causes men to hurt the women that they claim to love (andmay in fact actually love, at least in some limited sense of the word),then another and much larger group of researchers have looked at what it isabout certain women that cause them to be repeat victims of domesticviolence. (1996). London: Jessica Kingsley.Mykitick, R. (1998). Surviving domestic violence: Women who broke free. The women who stay insuch situations, however, are almost marked by certain characteristics. 28). While no act of violence should ever be trivialized, thispaper will look almost entirely at the phenomenon of violence perpetuatedby men against women. It remainstrue today that a woman with a sense of her own power is unlikely to remainin an abusive situation, and women in the 19th century were just beginningto flex their political muscles. ReferencesBarnes, P. The literature on domestic violence as it manifests itself in Americanculture at this bridge in time between the second and third millennia, canbe subdivided into several basic categories, each of which shall be brieflyexamined here. But women in the 19th century in both England and the United Stateswere far from willing simply to bear the beatings in silence. For most of us, the threat ofdeath or even of serious physical harm is worse than any other possibility,including poverty (up to and including homelessness, although this statetoo carries with it the threat of violence), disgrace in the eyes of one'sfamily, and loneliness. Alsoimportant in terms of isolating a woman are larger cultural issues. Simpson trial. The most important among these are that she has relatively littlepower - not in terms of physical strength, but in terms of social, economicand psychological power. (1999). Finally, women are made more likely victims of abuse if they lack asystem of social support. This shallbe discussed in greater detail below. Los Angeles: Hazeldon.McGee, C. 149). (ed.) (1994). (2 ). Other specific triggers for domestic violence are the kinds of eventsthat all people find stressful and likely to trigger feelings of inadequacy(but hat most of us respond to in non-violent ways). 61). This is further complicated by the fact that even when women doreport domestic violence, it may not appear as such on police reports andin court records. For example, beingfired, the death of a family member of friend, or news that one has aserious medical condition can be such triggers. And these same forces that affected the fathers(stepfathers, etc.) are more likely than not to be present in thehouseholds of the grown sons (Dutton, 1998, p. Such cultural traits incline women to be victims without anyrecourse to American cultural or legal institutions that would guard them(Richards, 2 ). (Because domestic violence is stillconsidered by women to be shameful, reports of it are no doubt dramaticallyless than actually occur, so all statistic concerning domestic violencemust be taken with some degree of skepticism.) Why exactly pregnancy -often even a wanted pregnancy - should cause a woman's partner to reactviolently is unclear. while poverty is good for no one, it may wellbe worse for men (Downs, 1996, p. 19). Other situations and sets of cultural circumstances that reduce thesense of control men have over their lives are all likely to increase thechance that men will become physically abusive. It should be noted before beginning a description of the current stateof research and thinking on domestic violence in the United States in the2 th and 21st centuries that (of course) the actuality of domestic violenceis probably at least as old as urbanization, although it has certainly notalways been regarded in the same light as it is now. 71). Extrapolating from the calls to one shelter in Los Angeles in aprimarily (Central American) immigrant neighborhood, the director of theshelter said she believes immigrant women are two to three times morelikely to be battered (Gwynne, 2 ). 41). This is rarely given as a reason fordomestic violence. It is also possible to go directly to peoplewho work with battered women to ask them about their sense of how immigrantwomen fare in this arena. If men often blame women forprovoking them into violence, women also often blame themselves - perhapsfor the psychologically simple reason that the pain is easier to bear if aperson thinks that she honestly deserves it (Downs, 1996, p. (1994). This last is true bothbecause of the size and strength differential between men and women as wellas because of the fact that men in general (and especially abusive men)have fewer internal dams against escalating the levels of violence. 127). Understanding domestic homicide. Chicago: University of Chicago.Dutton, D. The woman who leaves the first time she isattacked, or the one who warns her abuser that a second attack willguarantee her departure (and follows through) has in almost all cases botha different psychological profile and a different set of materialcircumstances than the woman who stays (Mykitick, 1994, p. 31). Cruelty and companionship: Conflict in 19th century married life. Though the habituatingforce of culture, forces outside the family unit proper, also have asignificant effect on the propensity of certain men to commit acts ofdomestic violence. Domestic violence shelters see far more native-born Americans thanimmigrants (even adjusting for the percentage of immigrants in thepopulation as a whole) but they receive calls and initial contact from manymore immigrants who simply do not have the resources to leave their abusivepartners. 71). It is also true that women willing to enter into a relationship with acontrolling partner are likely to have low self-esteem and low self-confidence. In American societies racialminorities tend to have less power than do whites, and a man who in hiswork life has to confront his reduced power as the member of a minoritygroup may compensate at home by striking out violently (Barnes, 1998, p.98). The public nature of private violence. 114). Taking these findings from the extremely large literature on domesticviolence, it is possible to form an hypothesis about the kind of womandescribed in the preceding paragraph - the immigrant woman to the UnitedStates who is living in poverty with her children and husband. However, in most people a sense of morality prevents them fromreproducing those behaviors that as adults they find morally wrong; not allchildren of murderers become killers - in fact very few of them do so(Placek, 1999, p. The Temperance Society, for example, wasformed not so much in opposition to alcohol per se but to the fact that mendrank away the money that women needed for food - and then beat them upwhen they stumbled out of the bars (Jamiolkowsi, 1997, p. Since the preliminary data dosupport this hypothesis, more extensive and closely focused research on therates of domestic violence faced by immigrant women would no doubt proveinformative and potentially useful to the women involved. However, an increasing number of jurisdictions arerequiring that (for example) mandatory arrests be made in cases of reporteddomestic abuse so that there will be a more complete record of domesticviolence in the future (Mykitick, 1994, p. Certainly, there isprobably some tendency in each one of us to reproduce the patterns ofbehavior with which we were surrounded as children - whether this isviolence or good manners or the way we fold clothes. Alcohol and drug use are also triggers, lowering as they dopsychological barriers against violence in some people. Women are more likely to remain in abusive situations if theythemselves were abused as children or saw other members of their natalfamilies being physically or sexually abused in precisely the same way.Although of course on the opposite side of the equation men who witness orsuffer violence are likely to become batterers (McGee, 2 , p. While not constituting the largest body ofresearch, it is an important one, and if it adheres in large measure towhat would most likely be our commonsense predictions then it is stilluseful to have these predictions confirmed. The data thatdo exist on immigrants suggest that in fact they are victimized more thannative-born American women, but these data are even more inconclusive thanother data on domestic violence. Boston: Northeastern University.Weiss, E. London: Guilford.Gwynne, E. Personal communication.Hamnerton, A. New York: Routledge.Placek, J. While it is impossible to rule out this possibility in all cases(given the immensely complex relationship between genetics and behavior),this seems to be of only limited value as an explanation given that menwith violent stepfathers (with whom they share no genetic material) seem tobe just as likely to be abusive as those who grew up in the same householdas biologically related violent fathers (Jacobson, 1998, p. 81). The problem of battering within the home seems to have become moresevere during the 19th century, although again the correlation betweenrecorded cases of domestic violence and actual cases of battering is nodoubt so low before the year 18 that it is hard to draw any firmconclusions (Hamnerton, 1992, p. They may also serveas triggers because drug and alcohol use may cause related stressfulsituations such as losing a job. This is because this type of violence accounts forthe greatest majority of incidents of domestic violence as well as for thefact that this type of violence accounts for the majority of lethaldomestic violence (Renzetti and Miley, 1996, p. 4). Methodology The most obvious methodology to use to determine whether immigrantwomen in the situation described above suffer higher rates of domesticviolence than do other women would simply be to review the literature forthe levels of violence suffered by different demographic groups of women.This, of course, would be far too simple to be accomplishable in such amanner. Vancouver: University of British Columbia.Dutton, D. Conclusion Immigrant women bear an unusually heavy burden in terms of carryingthe risk factors for being the victims of domestic violence. (Itwould be interesting to research this same issue looking at adoptedchildren in which the biological father is abusive and the adoptive fatheris not; this particular permutation does not seem to have been addressed.) Moreover, women who leave violent relationships precisely because theywish to shelter their children from being witnesses to violence seem to beable at least in large degree to break the cycle of violence. They may also not have jobs because the kindof controlling person that is inclined to become an abuser is also likelyto try to isolate his wife or girlfriend to increase the control he hasover her life by limiting the places she can go to and the people she canturn to (Jacobson, 1998, p. However, it does make sense thatdomestic violence should increase in the 19th century as people weredisplaced from their families and support systems and centuries-old farminglives by urbanization and industrialization. Battered women in the courtroom: The power of judicial response. New York: Routledge.Jacobson, N. And women from cultures in whichviolence inside of marriage is sanctioned far more officially in the UnitedStates may not have even the idea that what they are going though can bestopped. It is also true that women do often become what can be seen aspsychologically dependent on their abusers. 48). Violence in gay and lesbian domestic partnerships. A woman unfamiliar with the legal systemof a country and no knowledge of domestic violence shelters will also haveadditional impediments to escaping abuse. As has been noted several times, domestic violence is an underreportedcrime. Thus it is difficult to make precise correlations between the riskfactors described above and demographic categories such as immigrantstatus. They may alsobe trying to hide the abuse from their children and fear that reporting itand so making it public will harm their children (Mykitick, 1994, p. New York: Cornell University.Downs, D. 13). This is perhaps impossible toanswer from outside of such a relationship. The circumstances that make a woman a victim of domestic violenceinitially are only that she be in proximity to a man who decides to beviolent. It may have to do with the increased financialburdens brought on by another mouth to feed (at the same time that thewoman is unable to make her usual economic contributions). (2 ). Thisobviously excludes child abuse, not because this is an area of lesserconcern but because the dynamics of child abuse (while similar in someways) are different enough in others that it would extend the scope of thispaper too far to consider it here. Men may feel this even more than women because of their traditionalrole (at least in the West since the Industrial Revolution) as the economicsupport for their families. The archetypal battered woman (and by this I meanthe woman who stays in an abusive relationship, not one who has been strucka single time and then left) is one who feels that she has no other placeto go. Finally, one of the triggers for domestic violence is also pregnancy,the majority of first acts of domestic violence occur during a women'spregnancy (Websdale, 1999, p. It seems that the far greater influence in terms of a boy's growing upto be a perpetuator of violent crime is being immersed within a culture(and each household has a culture that is distinctly its own, even thoughit is of course also related to the larger culture) in which they arewitnesses to violence. A woman who finds herselfbattered and who has no job skills and who has no family or friends to turnto (probably as a result of being isolated from them intentionally by theabusive partner) and who has two or three or four small children to feed infact does not have a lot of very appealing options. They may well not have jobs, possibly because they areashamed to be seen with obvious marks of physical abuse, possibly becausethey are too injured to work. (1999). Confounding this simple definition that boys who watch men commitviolence grow up to be violent men themselves. It is also a condition that tends to makepeople feel out of control (and indeed they are less in control) of theirlives. 51). 67). Dangerous familiars: Representations of domestic crime in England, 155 -17 . & Miley, C. Children whoare removed at a very early age - certainly no later than five - are ingeneral no more likely to become batterers than children who come fromhomes where there is no abuse (Weiss, 2 , p. It may have todo with some primeval fear and/or envy that men feel towards the marvel ofwomen's fertility and their own less than equal role in comparison. The domestic assault of women: Psychology and criminal justice perspectives. (1998). London: Agreka Books. A culture is a set of commonly held rules, behaviorsand beliefs, and part of this commonly held belief system within a violenthousehold is the belief that violent acts are an acceptable response to(perceived) misdeeds on the part of one of the adults (Downs, 1996, p. (1995). This paper examines the recent research done on the subject ofdomestic violence in general before focusing specifically on the ways inwhich immigrant women are especially at risk. Women without jobs are also often those with children - and this isoften the crux of an abusive relationship. This is generally because they toobelieve that violence is an appropriate form of punishment and that anaction may be bad if someone else defines it as such - even if the subjectof the action sees nothing wrong with it (Dutton, 1995, 44). Women indeed were often beaten by their husbands to drivesuspected demons or spells out of them or because they might be witches;this much at least have changed. The abusive personality: Poverty and control in intimate relationships. These girls tend more than the average to grow into women who arelikely to stay in abusive situations. 37). (1998). Men who had once set their ownhours (for even those without their own land who worked as sharecroppershad some measure of freedom, or rather their work was determined more byrain and sun and calving time than by a human overseer) now had to spendtheir time trying to please a boss and a timeclock and implacable machines(Hamnerton, 1992, p. And so even if she may know that women can and often are killed bytheir abusers, she believes that even the possibility of death and thecertain fact of further abuse is a better choice for her than any other onethat she has (Dutton, 1995, p. Chief among these factors is poverty, which is one of the moststressful social circumstances. One striking aspectof older representations of domestic violence is how clearly they mirrorthe kinds of thinking that are still used by men to excuse such forms ofviolence. (1992). One is bybeing unemployed and so not having daily contact with other workers (eitherpaid or volunteer). But the beginningsof an answer do emerge. And it is men who feel out of control in their lives, and especiallymen who feel both out of control and emasculated, which may well be nearlythe same condition for many of them, who are most likely to be abusive.This may well be linked to their psychological position as witnesses toabuse when they were younger. 31).This attitude may never be expressed, but because it is acted out, it comesto have a validity in the eyes of the children who are the products of thathousehold culture. These attributes that are only magnified by physical abuse,which makes women think that they are truly terrible to deserve suchtreatment, that they are truly terrible to put up with such treatment whenthey do not deserve it, or both of these things at once (Weiss, 2 , p.141). Such a womanhas such a high accumulation of risk factors - poverty, possibly status asa minority member in the United States, no intact support system, smallchildren to care for, economic dependence on her husband, lack oflinguistic and cultural knowledge, possibly illegal status as an immigrant- that she would seem to be at the highest possible risk for abuse. However, instead of confronting theseresidual feelings of being out of control and being frightened by this lackof power, many men turn to violence because of the immediate sense of powerthat it gives them (McGee, 2 , p. The subject of domesticviolence is one that extends across disciplines; it is one of the topicsthat seems as likely to end up on the front pages of the newspaper as onthe pages of a scholarly journal. Drugs and domestic violence. As children watching abuse, they were not incontrol of the situation; they could not, for example, save their motherfrom being beaten by their father. 52). (1997). Not being able to speak English and so either not understanding whichauthorities to contact or how to speak to them after contact does seem tobe highly correlated with a woman's staying in an abusive situation(Mykitick, 1994, p. This caveat aside, it is true by some objective measure that many ifnot most women who stay in abusive relationships do not have goodalternatives. Although different writers use the term differently(and certainly it is used in different ways within popular usage) for thepurposes of this paper we shall use a generally accepted definition whichis violence by one adult member of a household against another. 45). Most of us cannot imagine living in an abusiverelationship so we cannot imagine any rational explanation as to what wouldmake one worth staying in. New York: Simon and Schuster.Jamiolkowski, R. Also a number of cultures, especially Asian ones,tend to hold women responsible for keeping their husbands happy and tomaintain the honor of the household by not allowing anything shameful to beknown. It should be noted that there is a smaller amount of researchdone on women who are one-time or possibly two-time victims of domesticviolence that shows that they fit a very different profile than those womenwho stay in violent situations. Children and domestic violence. As noted above, such isolation (from other womenespecially) is often an intentional tactic of the abusive partner. Just as any woman can become a rape victim (or any human a victimof murder), any woman can be attacked by her partner. Both men whowere abused (either physically or sexually) as children and those whowatched their fathers, stepfathers or other male role models physicallyassault members of their households are in some terrible way primed tocontinue this violence into the next generation (Dutton, 1998, p. Or, andthis may well be true even more of the time, women do not report the crimebecause they are afraid of reprisals in the form of further violence fromthe abuser. There have been fewer studies done on the effects on girls who grow upin violent households, but there do seem to be some analogous effects onthem. This definition is obviously and intentionally gender-neutral, for itdoes happen that women are sometimes the aggressors in situations ofdomestic violence, either against other women (in lesbian relationships) oragainst men. Indeed, the majority of women who are victims of domestic abusehave probably been threatened about not going to the police. If she stays with herabuser it is not simply because she has become psychologically dependent onhim or even upon the abuse but because she is economically dependent uponhim (Downs, 1996, p. The loss of autonomy and connection to family andthe natural rhythms of the earth must have nearly unbearable, and many menwho would never have turned to violence found themselves beating the womanwith whom they shared a life. When men batter women: New insights into ending abusive relationships. It mayhave to do with the memories the pregnancy stirs up of their own mother ortheir own childhood and so bring back memories of abuse that had beensuppressed (Websdale, 1999, p. 29).(This of course parallels the fact that those who are abused sexually orphysically as children are most likely to abuse their own children in thesame way). (2 ). More than victims: Battered women, the syndrome society, and the law. This occurs in part because women feel ashamed, either for nothaving left the violent situation that they were in or because of thereason manufactured by their abuser to justify the abuse or both. 42). Just as theClarence Thomas hearings raised the issue of sexual harassment in placeswhere before it had been ignored, the pictures of a battered and bruisedNicole Brown - pictures that she had made so that if Simpson ever killedher his past violence to her would be known -- gave an unforgettable faceto the problem of domestic violence. Among these conditions arebeing a member of a racial minority. Any person without a job and thereforewithout a guaranteed economic basis for her life is relatively lesspowerful than a partner with a job. But is this assessment an accurate one? This review of writing about and thinkingon domestic violence reflects that range of arenas in which the issue isexamined and debated. The second is through not having friends or familymembers close by. New York: Haworth.Richards, G. That case also highlighted some of thecomplex problems that scholars studying the issue of domestic violence andsocial workers trying to end the beatings face in their work. New York: Garland.Dolan, F. To provide a more conclusive answer tothis hypothetical question would require extensive fieldwork lookingspecifically at this particular issue. English accounts of domestic violence during the Renaissance andbeginning of the modern era are almost uniform in laying the blame for theviolence on the women who "asked" for it in different ways from refusing tohave sex with their husband or the head of the household (in the case ofservants), for being improperly submissive, for being bad cooks, forbearing daughters instead of sons, or for casting the evil eye (Dolan,1994, p. Most people can learn not only from their ownmistakes but from those of their parents as well. Some researchers have looked at the issue of what type of men arelikely to become abusive. (1996). Domestic violence: From a private matter to a federal offense. Boston: Northeastern University.Renzetti, C. Some researchers have suggested that men who come from abusivefamilies may well become abusive in turn because they share a biological orgenetic element with their fathers that makes them more aggressive or moreviolent. TheTemperance movement - although this is not the version we see of it inmovies and mass media representations - was as much as wives being beatenas alcohol. Introduction The issue of domestic violence - always of concern to the victims,some researchers, and some social and women's shelter workers - became anissue of national concern during the O.J. Neithersource of information provided a complete picture, for the population istoo large, too diverse, too spread out, and too ashamed. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

Many of our Papers can be Downloaded From This Site!

PLEASE READ THIS, IT IS IMPORTANT!

Office hours are Monday through Friday, from 9 am to 5 pm (PST). You may place orders for custom research over the phone during office hours. E-mail requests can be made to our graduate and undergraduate department any time, and will be reviewed during office hours. You may also contact customer service any time through e-mail, and we will review your message during business hours. A great many papers can be downloaded right from this site, but not all of them. If you would like to know if a particular paper is downloadable, just look in the description for: "Available for Internet Download: Y" or "Available for Internet Download: N" If you wish to purchase a paper which is NOT available for immediate download, you will need to make other shipping arrangements. Also, please be aware that these orders are processed Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm (PST). If you place your order after 4:45pm on Friday, it will not be processed until the following Monday morning. We charge $8 per page for all of our pre-written reports, plus shipping (and tax for California residents). However, the highest cost of any ONE report is $136, or 17 pages. Please, take a moment. Make sure you have chosen the report you want or need BEFORE you complete your order. If you are not sure, allow us to help you. We do not offer refunds or exchanges, so it is important for you to let us answer your questions during office hours. Reports which are e-mailed or downloaded are in Microsoft Word format. We are making more reports available for e-mail delivery faster than we can update our listings. Please call to check on the status of particular reports. There are many other shipping options which are listed on the Checkout page.