ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows how network members, societal norms, and values about women, marriage, and the family, and violence, influence battered women. It supports feminists and critical theorists who argue that too much is expected of families as the only support for troubled members. The book demonstrates an inextricable link between authors' ideology and practice in the human service and political arenas concerning violence. Most network members, like the women themselves, believed that violence is primarily a medical problem, something demanding treatment. But when the women did interact with health and human service professionals, they sensed that institutional representatives regarded battering as taboo, and that they were shunned rather than helped. Social network members influenced the women in their attempts to cope with battering and its long-term after-effects: family members generally were positive, but agency representatives generally were not supportive.
