Murray Arnold Straus

Denise A. Donnelly

The author suggests that spanking children is a form of violence and that such treatment not only adversely affects the children who experience it, but society as a whole.

Corporal Punishment in American Families

Beating the Devil Out of Them

Larry Baron

Women are in much greater danger of being raped in some American states than in others. Baron (Center for the Study of Women, UCLA) and Straus (sociology, U. of New Hampshire) examine the evidence in support of four seemingly contradictory theories and integrate them into a single sociocultural theory that accounts for these differences in the incidence of rape. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

A State-level Analysis

Four Theories of Rape in American Society

Gerald T. Hotaling

Why is the social group that society most often looks to for warmth, intimacy, and love also characterized by cruelty and violence? This book attempts to answer that seemingly ironic question. The authors examine aspects of family stress from both social and cultural viewpoints and conclude that violence grows out of the nature of social arrangements and cannot be explained in terms of the personalities of husbands and wives. They emphasize the fundamental contradictions built into family life as it is now constituted, and point out that counseling and family therapy alone will not decrease the level of violence in family settings. Real change will come about only with a restructuring of the relations between women and men, and that in turn is dependent upon a fundamental reallocation of power and status in society at large. In their examination of the apparently irrational or bizarre aspects of family life, the authors of this book move beyond the problem of physical violence to an understanding of the nature of the family itself.

The Social Causes of Husband-wife Violence

Richard J. Gelles

For this study, a nationwide sample of 960 males and 1,183 females were interviewed to examine methods of conflict resolution within the family. Information was gathered regarding the following areas : resolution of conflicts between spouses and between parents and children, including detailed information on the development of conflicts resulting in violence, resolution of conflicts in the respondent's childhood family, family power structure, marital closeness and stability, personality, and stress factors.

Physical Violence in American Families, 1976

Suzanne K. Steinmetz

Behind Closed Doors is grounded in the unprecedented national survey of the extent, patterns, and causes of violence in the American family. Based on a study of over 2,000 families, the authors provide landmark insights into this phenomenon of violence and what causes Americans to inflict it on their family members. The authors explore the relationship between spousal abuse and child abuse as well as abuse between siblings, violence by children against their parents, and the causes and effects of verbal abuse. Taken together, their analysis provides a vivid picture of how violence is woven into the fabric of family life and why the hallmark of family life is both love and violence. This is a comprehensive, highly readable account of interest to both the professional and the layperson on an important topic, which concerns the social well-being of us all.

Murray Arnold Straus

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