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Newsroom >
Press Release> April 25, 2006
NCCEV Press Release
May 12, 2006
Family violence soars*
By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 12, 2006
For 22 years, domestic violence experts have
estimated that a staggering number of children — between 3 million
and 10 million — live in homes where violence occurs.
A new study has updated — and increased — that number,
to 15.5 million children, including 7 million who live in homes with
"severe" violence between adult partners.
Experts in domestic violence say these new numbers are an overdue
recalibration of the tragic reality they see.
But the study, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, may
also reopen a long-festering ideological argument about whether men
or women are the most violent in the home.
The study found that, contrary to public perception, women committed
more acts of violence than their male partners in 11 overall categories
of violence. Specifically, women were more likely than men to throw
something, push, grab, shove, slap, kick, bite, hit or threaten a
partner with a knife or gun.
However, men were more likely than women to commit "severe"
acts of violence, such as beating, choking, burning, forcing sex or
actually using a knife or gun on their partners.
When minor and major acts of violence were tallied, female-to-male
violence accounted for 18.2 percent of overall violence and 7.5 percent
of severe violence. Male-to-female violence accounted for 13.7 percent
of overall violence and 8.6 percent of severe violence.
The study, which is based on an interviews with 1,615 married or cohabiting
couples and extrapolated nationally using census data, found that
21 percent of couples reported domestic violence. Around 60 percent
of these homes contained minor children, which allowed researchers
to estimate the national numbers of children living in homes with
some violence to severe violence, updating much lower earlier estimates.
The new, larger estimate "has serious implications for policy
and practice," said Steven Marans, director of the National Center
for Children Exposed to Violence at the Yale University Child Study
Center in New Haven, Conn.
Children exposed to domestic violence often develop antisocial behaviors;
have problems with social skills, learning and "emotional regulation;
and are more likely to be involved in domestic violence as adults,
said Mr. Marans.
"The policy implications are absolutely clear," he said.
If the nation doesn't confront the problem of family violence when
children are young, "we pay through the teeth in multiple other
ways" when they are grown.
Jackie Warrilow of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence
in Harrisburg, Pa., said the updated estimate of children living in
violent homes is "far more representative" of the problem.
She agreed with the study's authors that even 15.5 million is an undercount
because the study didn't include single parents, homosexual couples
or separated couples. "We know that violence escalates when the
victim separates from her perpetrator," she said.
*2 page article. Please visit The Washing Times for continuation
of this article*
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