NCJ Number
93704
Editor(s)
R J Gelles,
C P Cornell
Date Published
1983
Length
171 pages
Annotation
These 11 papers examine family violence from an international perspective, indicating that family violence varies from country to country but is probably most common in Western, industrialized nations.
Abstract
A review of selected published and unpublished articles reveals that information about the extent, patterns, causes, and other aspects of family violence around the world depends on the degree to which societies recognize the existence of family violence or define it as problematic and deviant. Four papers developed from a cross-cultural perspective focus on family violence as a nearly universal phenomenon related to the basic aspects of human association, variations in the victimization of children around the world, definitions of child abuse and programs for dealing with it in eight countries, and the relationship between wife beating and the punishment of women. Three studies of child abuse focus on possible causal factors in child abuse cases in England and Australia and on child abuse in India as the product of an impoverished and changing society. Three papers on wife abuse emphasize the importance of understanding the context of the societies in which such violence takes place. Wife victimization in England, Scotland, Uganda, and Kenya are examined. Concluding comments emphasizing the need for cross-cultural studies of family violence, tables, figures, chapter reference lists, and an index are supplied.