Examine the patterns of, and reasons for, domestic violence in society
Alice Thorpe
Essay Question
Examine the patterns of, and reasons for, domestic violence in society (24 marks)
Domestic violence is the physical, psychological, sexual or financial violence that takes place within a relationship that creates a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour. In society, domestic violence is seen as wrong, yet it still happens. Some people believe that a minority of people behave in this manner because of psychological causes rather than social ones, however a number of sociologists have challenged this view. Domestic violence follows a social pattern and it is mainly violence by men towards women. Although this doesn’t mean that it is only women that are the victims of domestic violence, men can also be equally affected by such behaviour. Mirrlees-Black conducted a study and found that most victims are women and that nearly 1 in 4 women has been assaulted by a partner at some time in her life, and 1 in 8 repeatedly so. This theory is backed up by Russel and Rebecca Dobash’s study of police and court records. They found that this type of violence is often caused by the man seeing a challenge to his authority, and that marriage encourages this as the traditional roles of man and wife still stand, if not as strong, in today’s society. This links domestic violence to the time period within which it took place, because if these sociologists see that marriage is a cause of this abuse, when marriage was more common within society, the issue of domestic violence could have also been dominant.