Thesis (D. Min.)--Colgate Rochester Divinity School/Bexley Hall/Crozer Theological Seminary, 1998. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-158).

This thesis explores how the battered woman attachment to her abusive partner impacts on her interactions with the legal system and non-legal resources. This qualitative research project is based on in-depth interviews conducted with seven abused women who procured interdicts in terms of the Prevention of Family Violence Act 133 of 1993 to restrain their husbands from assaulting them. The research reviews the nature of abuse suffered by the participants, their psychological attachments to their husbands, and their patterns of help-seeking in relation to the law and non-legal resources. Two main theoretical frameworks, psychoanalysis and feminism inform this study. The study found that the participants retained unrealistic hopes that their husbands would reform and become loving, caring partners, and that they treated their husbands with care and sympathy despite their husbands’ often brutal behaviour towards them. The findings suggest that the women’s behaviour towards their husbands was the product of two reality distorting psychological defences, splitting and the moral defence which they used to preserve their attachments to their abusive partners. These defences intersected with rigid patriarchal prescriptions of femininity which dictate that women should be stoically caring towards their husbands, and should hold relationships together no matter what the cost to themselves. The participants interactions with the legal system and with non-legal sources of help were structured by their reliance on splitting and the moral defence, and by the dictates of patriarchal ideology. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that at one level the participants sought help to get protection from abuse, the study shows that their help-seeking was motivated by their conflicting desires to punish and reform their husbands. The participants sought help in ways which enabled them to strike a compromise between expressing their anger at their husbands, whilst simultaneously preserving their psychological attachments to them. The study concludes that the women’s interactions with the law and with other helping resource reflect their attempts to preserve their paradoxical attachments to their husbands, and to stabilise their own fragile sense of self and gender identity.

Data from a prospective, longitudinal study of a birth cohort of over 1000 New Zealanders was used to examine the relationships between the level of childhood physical abuse a young person is exposed to during childhood (birth to 16 years), and a range of later parenting outcomes in young adulthood. To address this issue, three questions were considered. First, the study examined risk factors that contribute to an early transition to parenthood. Second, this study investigated the current family circumstances of contemporary young parents and their families. And finally, the association between childhood physical abuse and later parenting outcomes was examined. All members of the Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS) who had become parents by age 25 (112 women and 55 men) were included in the study. To be eligible for inclusion cohort members had to be either biological parents or actively involved in the parenting of non-biological children on a regular basis. Exposure to childhood physical abuse (CPA) was measured at ages 18 and 21 based on cohort member's retrospective reports. At age 25, a parenting interview was conducted which included the following measures of parenting: the Conflict-Tactics Scale (CTS-PC; Straus, Hamby, Finkelhor, Moore, & Runyan, 1998), Dunn scales of positivity and negativity (Dunn, Deater-Deckard, Pickering, & Golding, 1999), the Parenting Practices Questionnaire (PPQ; Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen, & Hart, 1995), HOME ratings of responsivity and avoidance of punishment (Caldwell & Bradley, 1979), and interviewer ratings of parental warmth, sensitivity, and child management (Quinton, Rutter, & Liddle, 1984). Findings showed that parents who experienced higher levels of punishment whilst growing up were more negative and less positive towards their own children, were more accepting of the use of physical discipline, and scored lower on warmth, sensitivity and child management compared to those with lower levels of exposure to childhood physical abuse. These findings contribute to our understanding of the effects of childhood physical abuse on later parenting outcomes.

<p>The problem of abusive relationships has attracted national attention in South Africa. Historically South Africa has a strongly entrenched patriarchal system, which gives men proprietary rights over women. Traditional and cultural values as means of resolving conflict are critical in shaping and perpetuating violence of men toward women. A woman&rsquo / s social status is believed to be derived by her relative position to a man that is as daughter, wife, girlfriend or mother of his children. One solution to ending the abuse and leading violence free lives would be to leave the relationship. While this is a possible solution it should be noted that in order for women to leave it requires enormous restructuring of material, physical and social relations. A qualitative feminist research methodology was used with a convenience sample of 8 women who agreed to participate in the study. In depth interviews were conducted with the participants to explore the perceptions and experiences of Xhosa women in abusive relationships. The participants resided in Khayelitsha, Phillipi and Langa. The interviews lasted from 30 minutes to 45 minutes, were audio taped and transcribed. In view of the qualitative nature of the study, the researcher employed thematic analysis. Women mentioned their experiences of abuse and discussed their help seeking strategies. A number of themes that emerged from the study suggested clearly women&rsquo / s perceptions and experiences to remain in their abusive relationships. These themes relate to commitment, staying because of children, cultural beliefs (lobola), economic dependence and lack of social support. It also emerged from the discussions with women that the emotional and structural support that these women received from the NGO played a huge role. The most important finding from the study was that change occurred as a result of abuse.</p>

Purpose: The aim of the study is to analyse why the socialworker at the socialservices havn’t implemented the perspective of woman as subordinate and men as superior. Questions: Is the perspective of woman as subordinate and men as superior significant for the socialworker? Is the organisation, colleagues or de individuals thought structure of importance when it comes to implement the perspective? Does the socialworkers view of the clients as victims have an impact on the fact that the perspective has been given interest?  Method: Critical case study. Flexible design; The study is based on interviews with socialworkers and study of documents and statistics Conclusion: One of the central findings of the field study was that the implementation of the perspective of woman as subordinate and men as superior was of no use for the socialworkers as they saw it. The findings showed that the definition of a victim was not used or that they were unconscious that the definition of a victim did affect them in their work. The possibilities for the organisation to learn is of  importance for the implementation of the perspective of woman as subordinate and men as superior. Finally the results showed that in some way their work was influenced not only of the definition of the victim but also indirect of the perspective of woman as subordinate and men as superior.

No description available.

Meta-analyses with 144 correlations from 44 studies to assess the relationship between experienced, father-to-mother, and mother-to-father violence in the family of origin and partner violence for males and females in clinical, community and student samples.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Violence occurs in different environments, however, it is often found in the family with family members being the perpetrators. Family violence, as an integrative concept, is defined by few researchers or theorists, let alone conceptualised as a theoretical grounding for family-centred interventions aimed at violence in the home. However, family members are all affected in the act of any violence in the family, thus any intervention should include the whole family. A family-centred approach focuses on all family members to be included in the intervention and is acknowledged as the best method when trying to create an intervention for family violence. Thus, the aim of this study was to design an intervention programme for families experiencing family violence in order to reduce violence in the family. To create such a programme, intervention mapping was the chosen design for this study. Intervention mapping has five steps, 1.) Specify the programme’s goals into proximal programme objectives. In this stage, needs are identified; 2.) Selection of theoretical and practical strategies; 3.) Design the programme, 4.) Implementation of the programme, and 5.) Focus on anticipating process and effect evaluation. However, this study only focused on the first 3 steps of intervention development, namely, Phase I, a family violence needs assessment done to identify the problem, Phase II entailed a review done to determine appropriate theoretical and practical approaches for the intervention regarding family violence, and lastly, Phase III had been a Delphi study which aided in the design and development of the intervention. This study showed promising results with proven long-term positive effects in implementing a family-centred approach, and when coupled with a collaborative network of support services, political will, and community support, and has the ability to ensure continuity of care and improved functioning for families experiencing violence in the home.

The Family Safety Team (FST) is a collaborative intervention developed to address family violence in New Zealand. Interagency collaborations are effective at addressing the social supports for battery, improving the systems and responses of agencies that address battery, and improving cohesion and consistency across agencies. The FST has a particular focus on justice system agencies. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the Hamilton FST. The research was conducted using in-depth interviews with FST members and others directly involved with the project, archival research using police family violence files, observation of FST meetings, and a focus group with battered women. The evaluation was constructed around four aims: to identify any barriers to establishing the FST, to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Hamilton FST, to determine the adequacy of the FST structure, and to assess the extent to which the FST has improved the ability of agencies to enhance the safety and autonomy of battered women and hold offenders accountable. An overall finding of this evaluation was that people are feeling very positive about the Hamilton FST. The evaluation found that the FST has increased contact and communication between community and government agencies, and there was improvement in each agency's awareness of the policies, processes and protocols of other agencies in the FST. The evaluation found some limitations in the amount of monitoring and measurable outcomes from the FST, but this was understandable considering the infancy of the project and the time taken for members to understand their roles and the function of the FST. However, there were some positive developments in police responsiveness: an improved police attitude towards family violence cases, and an increase in cases coded as family violence. An important finding of this evaluation was that the Hamilton FST is functioning as a genuine collaboration. This seemed to be due to: mutual respect and an equal distribution of power among FST members, trusted working relationships, recognising each member for their area of expertise, and the role of the coordinator. There are, however, some limitations of the FST model that FST members need to acknowledge.

The ways in which men negotiate contradictory discourses to accommodate their domestic violence into their sense of self forms the focus of this thesis. The sixty-six men interviewed for this thesis had attended a twelve-week group in an attempt to stop their violence. Forty-two of their women partners also agreed to be interviewed. Overall two hundred and fifty-nine interviews were conducted with these men and their women partners. The men were found to draw on various competing discourses in their constructions of themselves. One of the sources was the print media. A content analysis of newspaper articles over a period of twenty years revealed that popular representations of domestic violence have increased over time and have privileged physical forms of violence. Representations of the perpetrator of domestic violence featured hegemonic forms of masculinity, emphasising the physicality of men's bodies. Although the men interviewed here had agreed to attend a professional course for violent perpetrators, they were selective in which professional discourses they used to explain their own violence. The thesis outlines legal, medical and human services discourses, focusing on selected interventions, and identifies weaknesses such as the use of prescriptive definitions of domestic violence and the reliance on women to report on their own and their partner's feelings and behaviours. Finally, women's and men's own representations of their experiences revealed that the domestic relationship is a complex entity - where contradictory scripts for masculinity and femininity are acted out. Feminist and masculinity theories of power and subjectivity are coupled with Foucauldian thought to provide a theoretical framework capable of untangling the contradictory issues expressed in these discursive spaces. A key contradiction occurs between an aspect of the male gender role discourse in which men are expected to 'look out for number one', which requires enacting high levels of self-control and control-over others. This is juxtaposed with the desire for men to exercise non-violent forms of control and an ethic of care for others as well as themselves. Even though women are often identified as the caregivers in the family, a significant finding of this thesis was that violent men work relentlessly to construct themselves as the ethical partner. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Social Sciences, 2004.