Violent Families

Eight million victims

To the 19th century composer John Howard Payne, it was Home Sweet Home. In today's America it is all too often an arena for shoving, pushing, punching, kicking, screaming, torture and death. Says Sociologist Murray A. Straus: "For any typical American citizen, rich or poor, the most dangerous place is home--from slaps to murder." Straus reckons that as many as 8 million Americans are assaulted each year by members of their own families.

For a long time, domestic violence did not get much attention from social scientists. If there was any real expert on this almost taboo subject, it was the cop on the beat, who often found himself intervening in family scraps, much to his chagrin: more policemen get killed or wounded while trying to settle such disputes than in any other line of duty. But lately social scientists like Straus, who heads the University of New Hampshire's Family Violence Research Program, have been taking a closer look at the subject. What they are finding is grim.

In 1976 Straus and two colleagues, Richard Gelles of the University of Rhode Island and Susanne Steinmetz of the University of Delaware, began what they believe is the first national survey of all types of family violence. They picked their subjects from every walk of life and all parts of the country; 2,143 family members were interviewed. Out of this study, which will be published in the fall as an eleven-chapter book titled Behind Closed Doors: A Survey of Family Violence in America (Doubleday), they offer a dismal statistical portrait of American family life. Highlights:

P: Sixteen out of every 100 couples have violent confrontations of one sort or another during the course of a year. In six of these cases there is severe kicking, biting, punching or hitting with objects. Almost four of every 100 wives are seriously beaten by their husbands.

P: Three of every 100 children are kicked, bitten or punched by their parents.

P: More than a third of all brothers and sisters severely attack each other.

As expected, the incidence of violence is highest among the urban poor (many of them minorities), blue-collar workers, people under 30 or without religious affiliation, families with a husband who is jobless and those with four to six children. But the study also showed that violence occurs among affluent families as well. Indeed, the wife of a university president (not New Hampshire) once quietly called Straus to ask what she could do about her husband, who was beating her; Straus suggested marriage counseling.

He and his colleagues had great difficulty getting at the root causes of such behavior. Says Straus: "The reasons are mixed--psychological, sociological, situational." The head of the household, for example, may feel under particular stress because he has been out of work too long. Violence may also be an echo of the past. Explains Straus: "When Mommy gives her two-year-old a slap for putting something dirty in his mouth, he is learning from infancy that those who love you hit you." Another trigger may be war or inflation. Says Gelles gloomily: "If heating goes up to a buck a gallon and we have a real recession, it's going to get worse."

The sociologists have no easy answer to violence in the American family. While they applaud such moves as the opening of shelters for battered wives and the establishment of a National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect, they believe that there must be a more basic attack on violence, including the reduction of "macho" themes on television, the outlawing of corporal punishment in schools and perhaps even the elimination of the death penalty. As Straus explains, in American society, "violence is an acceptable solution to problems. And that is how it is used in families.''

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