Domestic Violence
...stion that contributing factors for domestic violence include: the abusers (as children) having witnessed violence in family, substance abuse, cultural factors that condone the abuse of spouses and children, and even the influence of the media (Summer/Hoffman 2002). Liza N.Burby(1996) , author of Family Violence, describes that children who witnessed abuse of a parents or were themselves abused by a parent or other family member grow up to abuse their spouse, children, or both. According to a 1992 domestic violence report compiled by Barbara J. Hart(1992), managing attorney of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, boys who witness their fathers battering their mothers are three times more likely as adults to hit their own wives. And sons of the most violent fathers have a rate of wife beating one thousand times greater than do sons of nonviolent father (Burby 1996). When family violence occurs among the family members, each becomes less and less able to take the emotional attitude of the other in the interactional situation. They cease to understand one another. They interact only out of sense of habit or duty or because they perceive no alternatives. These conditions promote internal violence between the other members of the family unit. Children become violent toward one another, as a reaction to the violence they see and feel all around them. This process may eventuate in the elimination of one or all of the parties in the violent family. Or the violent groups may persist for years in an unstable field of negative, violent emotionality (Norman K. Denzin 1984). Violent against women is a serious and escalating problem. An estimated three to four million women annually in the United States are the victims of physical abuse by their intimate partner. By some estimates, as many as one-third to one-fifth of all women who visit emergency rooms are victims of abuse by their husband or boyfriends. Additionally, abuse of pregnant women is not a rare occurrence. At least 240,000 are battered each year in the United States, which is about 6 percent of all pregnant women. In addition to miscarriages, battering can cause severe harm to the unborn child, which is number one cause of birth defects of pregnant women (Burby 1996). Incidences involving domestic abuse against women are often perceived by both the participants involved and by those outside the relationship in ways that involve blame. In a variation of the fundamental attribution error, aggressors will often attribute their abusive behavior to external causes (e.g., work-related stress or something the victim may have done to anger him), while victims attribute the abuse to internal factors within themselves or situational factors about the abuser (e.g., "It¡¯s only because he has been drinking"). The frequent occurrence of victim self-blame is reinforced by social attitudes, which are responsible for often blaming the woman for inciting the abuse or not leaving her abuser (Norman K. Denzin 1984). About 1.5 million children, fifteen of every thousand, are seriously abused each year in the United States by a parent or guardian. (Burby 1996) The reasons that domestic violence and child abuse often coincide are many. Hazel reports that 37% of mothers living in shelters said their children were hit in the process of trying to protect them...