Lecture 10: Conflict and Violence

Midterm #1
-example of midterm question: what is the significance of language to dominant understanding
of the family?
-midterm: 20 multiple choices, 6 short answer in which you will pick 2-3 (these are actually long
answers) and a bonus question.

Recap from last class

-outcomes of children following divorce
-thinking of divorce now it is considered part of a bigger process instead of a particular event

Dominant myths about the family:

-first myth that is common is the love between family members is easy. This is the belief that
you will fall in love with the baby when it is born. Now a day we find this is not true because of
women developing post-partum depression.
-second myth is that the family is a place of security

Dominant myths about violence and crime

-stranger danger: You should be afraid of strangers and assume then a threat unless otherwise.
This idea has some problems like there are many cases where children were in danger but too
scared to approach a adult because of this belief that they need to stay away from strangers.
-violence is rare
-children, women, and old adults are more likely to experience violence from the family of
significant other than a stranger. Only men are seen to experience more violence from
strangers
-The reason is because: (1) the family is seen as an important institution so we do not have laws
that are very critical of the family.
-(2) the experiences of women, children, and older adults is genuinely undervalued. If we took
seriously the concerns of these groups we could deal with family violence
-(3) maintaining the status qou and not disturbing these beliefs can lead to real consequences.
The belief that children are safe with their parents and women are safe with their partner.
These beliefs are harmful.

Defining family violence

-potential danger to one’s survival, safety, self-esteem. This can be considered violence.
-researchers always debate what to call gender base violence that occurs within a family. The
term gender-base violence covers violence in the home and outside with strangers or family.
This is why this term is not one people like to use because it is too general to talk about just the
family.
-use the term intimate partner violence is used to explain violence in a relationship. This does
not have gender bias so it is not really liked by other researchers.
-understanding violence: physical violence (harm to body), psychological/emotional (belittling,
name calling, gas lighting, etc.), verbal (name calling, threats), spiritual (limiting one’s access to
practicing their religion or forcing them to practice a religion they do not believe in), financial
(seen with older adults, manipulating someone’s finance without them knowing, limiting the
money they have, taking their money from their paychecks), sexual (anything involving lack of
consent, children are always seen to not give consent)

Why is family violence so hard to measure?

- Some aspects of family violence are illegal whereas others aspects are not like emotional
abuse and financial abuse which are hard to connect to a law. A lot of instances of family
violence goes unreported because there are emotional relationships involved so to makes it
difficult to conceptualize it as a crime and to also act on it. To add, married couples to not have
to testify against the other so they might not want to do that because under most cases they
are dependent on each other financially and also because of children. Furthermore, family
violence is like a cycle in which there are bad moments but them there are moments that are
good so the person may just bare it because they remember the good days. Another reason is
language barriers can make it hard to access formal reporting and to just simply be aware of the
laws. People with unstable immigration status are less likely to contact police if it means that
they could get in trouble with being here illegally.
-you have small sample size surveys with detailed questions but since there are not a lot of
participants it might not be representative. For the larger surveys with less questions we see
that they are not as detailed so we might see some trends but it might not be representative.
For example, in a recent large survey they came to the conclusion that men suffer from partner
violence more than women. This survey does not take into account that more women were
reported to be assaulted with a weapon compared to men and more women feared that they
would die compared to men.
-focus groups: not everyone is conformable talking it front of others about their life so this
would mean that they might not have a lot of participants in these groups.
-for all these reasons mentioned it is very hard to measure. The way to address this is to look at
data from many different sources to come up wit a final trend.

Categories of family violence

-(A) Intimate partner violence: In the past they had the prohibition (alcohol band) to stop the
violence that was occurring with men beating their wives. We know that at the end this did not
work. In the past, if you assaulted a stranger there was a certain standard but if you assaulted
your wife the standards were higher where you needed a lot of proof that the violence that the
women received is far greater than that a stranger would receive. Furthermore, rape was legal
in Canada for married couples until the 70s.
-IPV: intimate partner violence
-women are morel likely to be harmed at the work place than men. With an ex-partner they are
still likely to know where you work so they have the ability to harm you there.
-some connect family violence with other stressors in life. Like Marx said that poor men are
more likely to beat their women due to mistreatment at work. This is an outdated theory.
-There are also the belief that this IPV is due to broader social structures such as patriarchy
were men show their power through violence.
-There is also the aspect of culture as well as mental health.
Categories of family violence
-(B) Child abuse: Children experience very little violence that isn’t from the family member. The
second most common abuse the child suffers from is exposure to domestic violence in the
home. There is long-term trauma from child abuse and it is different from girls and boys where
girls are more likely to passively accept violence and boys are more likely to express violence.
-a lot of connections can be made between poverty and child abuse. If we address poverty as a
social issue how big of an impact would this have in reducing child abuse. If you cannot afford
to give your child formula, you could move them to solid food before they are able to handle it.
Statistic Canada has also mentioned that people ration the child’s food by mixing it with water
so they believe that they are doing a good job but if the child does not get their required intake
they will become malnourished.

Categories of family violence

-(C) Abuse of parents: Mother are more likely to experience abuse than fathers. Being harassed,
called names, and manipulated by their children is seen to be more stressing than physical
abuse. Parents would rather their child be physical than no-physical. Parents are afraid their
child would get arrested and have their life ruined so due to the parent concern it goes usually
unreported.

Categories of family violence

-(D) Elder Abuse: Most older adults who experience violence is due to family members not due
to doctors, nurses or living homes. Older adults are more likely to be isolated to it can be hide
longer compared to children who have to go to school or adults who go to work. Since older
adults do not have such a regular schedule it can be hide. We also see financial abuse with
older adults because often later at life you will transfer financial maintenance over to your
children.

Categories of family violence

-(E) Sibling Abuse: It is not really seen as dangerous and the most common type of violence
above all the other types. Sibling violence falls out of the topics of bullying and family violence.
Bullying is seen as a cycle of verbal harassment, threats, and then physical violence between
children. This is quite similar to sibling abuse. We acknowledge the impact of child-child
violence when it comes to bullying but we ignore it when it comes to sibling abuse.

Sibling Abuse: Bullying?

-the family is seen as a unique space that is private and default of love. Even if they beat each
other up they love each other in the end.
-the other difference is seen as that the parents know what’s best for the family. It is nobody
business except the parent on whether they children crosses the line or not.
-bullying is seen to be between strangers but sibling violence is seen to be less dangerous.

Canada’s Debate over Spanking

-in 2004 some adjustment was made to section 43, can’t hit children under 2, can’t hit them in
the head, cannot use a weapon, cannot use a lot of force, etc.
-2 biggest pieces of evidence are that Canada is connected to the UN convention on the rights
of the child in which they say any form of discipline involving violence is unacceptable. The
United States are the only people that did not sign the agreement due to this article 19 in which
they believe a parent has the right to discipline their child.
-spanking is unique to others forms of family violence. There is an element between parents
and child that are not seen n other relationships.