The Causes of Wife Abuse - Intergenerational Abuse

Research demonstrates a relationship between having been a victim of violence and becoming violent in future relationships. In fact, a 1996 report prepared by the American Psychological Association Task Force on Violence and the Family concludes that children's exposure to their father abusing their mother is the single strongest risk factor for passing violence down from one generation to the next. A study of 352 male and 296 female undergraduate college students found that witnessing parental violence was the strongest predictor of perpetrating dating violence (Shelby A. Kaura and Craig M. Allen, "Power and Dating Violence Perpetration by Men and Women," Journal of Interpersonal Violence, vol. 19, May 2004). Straus, however, cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that once violence occurs in a family, it will inevitably or automatically be transmitted to the next generation. Not all men who grow up in violent families end up abusing their spouses, and not all abused children or abused wives will abuse others. Conversely, some violent individuals grow up in nonviolent families.

Richard Gelles and Murray Straus, in Intimate Violence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), reported that the experience of children seeing their parents strike one another teaches three lessons:

• Those who love you are also those who hit you and those you love are people you can hit.
• Seeing and experiencing violence in your home establishes the moral rightness of hitting those you love.
• If other means of getting your way, dealing with stress, or expressing yourself do not work, violence is permissible.

Gerald T. Hotaling and David B. Sugarman, in "An Analysis of Risk Markers in Husband-to-Wife Violence: The Current State of Knowledge" (Violence and Victims, vol. 2, no. 2, 1989), considered fifty-two studies of domestic violence for ninety-seven potential risk markers, defined as attributes or characteristics associated with an increased risk of either the use of husband-to-wife violence or of being victimized by husband-to-wife violence. They found only one consistent risk for the victims in the relevant literature: women who have experienced physical spousal abuse are more likely to have witnessed violence between parents or caregivers during their childhoods. Experiencing violence was a weaker predictor of severe husband-to-wife violence than is witnessing violence.

Shame

Donald Dutton et al. in "The Role of Shame and Guilt in the Intergenerational Transmission of Abusiveness" (Violence and Victims, vol. 10, no. 2, Summer 1995), tested their theory that being shamed in childhood leads to an assaultive adulthood. The distinction between shame and guilt is that shame produces disturbances in self-identity, while guilt produces bad feelings and remorse about the condemned behavior but not the self. Using a series of psychological tests with 130 battering men, researchers concluded that shaming experiences in childhood contribute to the formation of a borderline personality disorder, including identity disturbances, temporary psychotic experiences, and the use of defenses such as projecting blame on someone else or the "splitting" of an individual's personality. According to the authors, shaming experiences result in personality disturbances, while parental abuse contributes the model behavior for expressing anger.

Beaten Child, Beaten Wife

Ronald Simons et al. in "Explaining Women's Double Jeopardy: Factors that Mediate the Association between Harsh Treatment as a Child and Violence by a Husband" (Journal of Marriage and the Family, vol. 55, 1993), examined the link between women who received harsh treatment in childhood and later married abusive husbands. Researchers asserted that women who were abused in childhood marry abusive husbands—not because they have learned that violence is permissible, but because they are apt to marry men from similar backgrounds. Children raised in violent environments are often noncompliant, defiant, aggressive, and perform poorly in school. Researchers found that the abusive behavior by adults who were abused in childhood was part of a long-standing pattern of interpersonal difficulties and antisocial behavior.

The researchers did not find a connection between abuse and traditional gender beliefs that men are supposed to be dominant. Nor did they find a connection between the level of control the women felt they had in their lives and the incidence of abuse. On the contrary, the women in abusive marriages were not submissive; they tended to have a history of aggressive, deviant behavior. Simons et al. theorized that rebellious girls are more likely to date and marry equally antisocial, rebellious young men and end up in abusive relationships.