The Causes of Wife Abuse - Intimate Partner Violence Declines With Increasing Age

Jill Suitor, Karl Pillemer, and Murray Straus in "Marital Violence in a Life Course Perspective" (Physical Violence in American Families, [Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 1990]), found that both marital conflict and verbal aggression consistently decline with age over every ten-year period. Analysis of the National Family Violence Surveys data from 1975 and 1985 revealed that the rate of violence in the eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old group dropped when its members entered the thirty- to thirty-nine-yearold group. The rate dropped even further when the older group became the forty- to forty-nine-year-old group. The consistent decline applied to both men and women in all age groups between eighteen and sixty-five.

Suitor, Pillemer, and Straus concluded that marital conflict and verbal aggression decrease with age. They considered several different possible explanations for this observation, including greater pressure to conform (perhaps because of a greater stake in society), the greater cost of deviating from accepted patterns—having "more to lose"—and greater expectations.

Subsequent studies confirm that intimate partner violence declines with advancing age. Analyzing National Crime Victimization Survey data, Rennison found married women aged twenty to twenty-four had eight victimizations per one thousand women, compared to just one per one thousand among married women aged fifty or older (Intimate Partner Violence and Age of Victim, 1993–99, [Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001]). Callie Rennison and Michael Rand also found lower rates of intimate partner violence in women over age fifty-four in their study "Nonlethal Intimate Partner Violence against Women" (Violence against Women, vol. 9, December 2003). They believed lower rates might be due to several factors, such as homicides of younger women, earlier divorces from abusive partners, or the turning of older perpetrators to other forms of victimization, such as psychological abuse or economic domination.

Spousal Abuse among Older Adults

Spouse abuse is a known form of elder abuse, but there is little known about its precise causes or frequency. The rate of spouse abuse among older adults is estimated to be less than 20% of all elder abuse reported by the National Elder Abuse Incidence Study (Washington, DC: National Center on Elder Abuse, 1998). Researchers speculate that an abusive relationship between older adults may simply be a continuation of abuse that began earlier in a marriage or may begin in response to age-related stresses, such as retirement, failing health, caregiver burdens, or increased dependency. Historically, social and support services for abused older adults have been largely health related and there is scant help available for elders trapped in abusive intimate partner relationships.

Sarah Harris, in "For Better or for Worse: Spouse Abuse Grown Old" (Journal of Elder Abuse and Neglect, vol. 8, no. 1, 1996), used the 1985 National Family Violence Survey data to compare respondents under sixty years old to those over age sixty. Although the incidence of spouse abuse in older couples was significantly less than that of younger couples, many of the risk factors for violence were the same. Not surprisingly, abuse occurred most often in situations where there was a high degree of conflict.

The factors associated with older partner violence included lower education levels, lower family income, verbal aggression, drug abuse, depression, perceived stress, low use of reasoning tactics, and marital conflict. Racial/ethnic group affiliation also played a part: blacks and Hispanics in the younger group and blacks in the oversixty group were more likely to experience couple violence. When violence was reported for more than the twelve months preceding the survey, intergenerational violence and poor physical health were also found to be significant.

Rennison and Rand found that spouse abuse among their oldest cohorts was similar to that found in younger cohorts: most incidents (85%) were committed without a weapon, a substantial portion of the abusers used alcohol or drugs, and the likelihood of injuries across all age groups was similar. However, mature women were less likely to report the violence to police than younger women.