The Causes of Wife Abuse - Abuse Of Pregnant Women

Research about intimate partner violence reveals that violence does not stop when women become pregnant. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Reproductive Health gathers data about the health of expectant mothers using its Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS). An analysis of PRAMS data revealed that between 2.9% to 5.7% of women reported being abused by their husbands or partners in the year before they gave birth. Author Jana L. Jasinski believed this estimate too low, since the PRAMS asks limited questions about domestic violence and asks about abuse rather than about particular behaviors ("Pregnancy and Domestic Violence: A Review of the Literature," Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, vol. 5, January 2004). Still, she argued, pregnancy does not appear to increase the risk of domestic violence, although more research into that question is needed.

Studies estimating higher rates of abuse of pregnant women—as many as 324,000 women per year and rates as high as 20% of pregnant women—have been reported (Julie Gazmararian et al., "Prevalence of Violence against Pregnant Women," Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 275, no. 24, 1996; and Julie Gazmararian et al., "Violence and Reproductive Health: Current Knowledge and Future Research Directions," Maternal and Child Health Journal, vol. 4, no. 2, 2000). Higher abuse rates were reported later in pregnancy, with 7.4% to 20% of that violence occurring in the third trimester. The lowest rates were reported in a study of women with higher socioeconomic status who were treated in a private clinic. The assailants were mainly intimate or former intimate partners, parents, or other family members. Two studies that also examined violence in the period after birth found that violence was more prevalent after birth than during pregnancy.

Jana L. Jasinski's research, cited above, suggested that violence directed toward pregnant women is usually part of an ongoing pattern of domestic violence. Some factors, however, do seem to increase the risk of violence for pregnant women. Julie Gazmararian et al. found that women with unwanted pregnancies had 4.1 times the risk of experiencing physical violence by a husband or boyfriend during the months prior to delivery than did women with desired pregnancies. Researchers have found higher rates of violence during pregnancy for women who are young, have fewer than twelve years of education, are unmarried, are of low socioeconomic status, have postponed or foregone prenatal care, or have an unintended pregnancy. Other studies have found more reported violence when the partner is unhappy about the pregnancy.