ABSTRACT
Violence is not the exclusive property of a few cruel or mentally ill parents or spouses. It occurs in millions of "normal" families. The incidence rates for two types of family violence have been known for many years—physical punishment of children and murder of a family member. The focus of this chapter is on physical violence, which does not imply that physical assaults are the only, or even the worst, types of abuse in families. A child or a spouse can be terribly hurt by verbal assaults. This chapter examines a few of the multiple social causes of family violence, not because other types of causes, especially psychological causes, are unimportant. Rather, the division of labor in science and social science and constraints of space make such limitations necessary. The annual incidence rates and the marital prevalence rates indicate how many couples experience an assault.
