ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a discussion of the various defining characteristics of family violence. The statistics on family violence only estimate the rate of the phenomenon and, they dramatically underestimate the true incidence of maltreatment. People often wonder whether family violence is a phenomenon that is restricted to the United States and a few other societies in which aggressive resolution of conflict is common. Another way of trying to gather information about family violence includes the use of uninvolved informants. M. A Straus and R. J. Gelles interviewed family members about their involvement in spousal assault. Because, unlike with children, spouses do not have the legal right to hit each other, the authors counted as “assault” both minor forms of violence and the more serious forms that had also been counted as child assault. When a family member suffers from one type of abuse, often other types of abuse exist in the household as well.
