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 Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2005 1:46 am
There was a person who gave a speach at my school today about how we were going to be donating to a center that helps abused wives. She was telling us all the problems they had and what not. That was when some one asked the question "why do wives put up with beatings?". This sparked some thought in me. For the class I thought about in detail about wife beatings.
My main thought was " why do they put up with it?". I came up with that they felt as if they could not make it in the outside world. Thus they did not feel independent enough. So now I thought " Why wouldn't women feel independent?". There are probably many reasons for this so I'm going to list the ones that I came up with.
First, I thought that it was a social thing. It has been just recently that the womens rights movement is progressed to the point where they are close to being thought as equalls of men. So that made me think, ok these women are 20-50. So that means that they grew up from the 50's to 80's. That means that when growning up they were raised being told that you have to marry a man, or you can't make it on your own. And some families put heavy emphasis on this as well. That was my initial idea.
So that means that the women growing up in the late 80's and 00's are being taught that women are equall, so that they will not stand for being beat. This in my opinion will result in a massive drop in the number of persistant wife beatings in the same couple. So the need for the centers will be destroyed in 10 or so years ( maybe longer than that). Just a side note: the media actually did somthing good for a change!
My next thought on why women wouldn't feel independent was a little more complicated in my opinion. Ok if women had little self esteem or self worth than they would think that they deserve this. Now there are many things that could cause this feeling as it happens in women and men. My initial thought was that she probably grew up in an abusive family, or was raised by an abusive parent. Then I came to realize that there are many things that could cause this. So I came up with this list:
Abusive family
Abusive parent
Parents who fight, ( this causes the child to think that the parents don't love them because the parents are causing the child pain by fighting or the other examples, thus they have low self worth because they assume that they are not worthy enough for their parents love. )
Parents who divorce( same concept as above)
Abused at school( being made fun of)
Parents who put huge expectations on them that are unrealistic( When they fail these crazy goals that the parents set up they feel as if they are no good, thus their self esteem drops)
Sexually abused at home, school, work, ext..( not to sure about this one for obvious reasons, But I think its that they feel that since it happened to them they deserved it, and obviously its bad. So they think that they deserved somthing bad, which means that they are not as good as other people, thus their self worth drops. As for when parents or other family does this the "parents who fight" concept applies.)
Parents who are drug abusers, alcohol applies.( Same concept as "parents who fight")
Feelings of being ugly or not sexy enough,( most of the time your self esteem goes down)
Parents who abandon them( Parents fighting concept applies)
Ok thats 10, so I think thats enough.
These were the only reasons of why women would think that they are not independent enough.
The media issue about " men are better than women" will take care of itself, so that leaves the dysfunctional family issue. I think that the centers which I will soon be donating to should put heavy emphasis on reteaching women that they are equal to men and can be independent.
So, that concludes my thoughts.
I want to know what your opinions on this issue is, and hopfully this thread won't drop like a lead balloon.
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Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 1:59 pm
Okay, I just wanted to let you know that I DO plan on responding to this, but as your post is long, I C&P'd and saved it on my hard drive to spend some more time looking through it. When I'm done I'll probably kill the content of this post here and stick in my response, kay? biggrin
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Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 4:30 pm
whee <------- This is me about to pee my pants becuase I'm awating your reply so much!
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:13 am
Explanation 1 - social progress towards women's rights has been relatively recent, and this explains the continued existence of battered women. The women of older generations have more of a problem with battering than the younger one, as they were not taught to be as independentSince I hadn't seen any recent stats on this, I had to go and do a little research. One site I loooked at was THIS one. Just take a brief look at the prevalance of domestic violence and I think this explanation already starts to look dubious. Also, when looking below on the page a bit more, the site states that Quote: **women ages 19-29 reported more violence by intimates than any other age group. **women aged 46 or older are least likely to be battered by an intimate. Naturally, this does not support the hypothesis that differing social expectations between the generations is the cause, or we would see the higher frequency of abuse in the older age bracket, not the younger one. Ideally, I wanted to dig up a bar graph showing yearly comparissons back at least five decades, but I wasn't quite able to dig this up. Explanation 2 - women do not leave sittuations of domestic abuse because they have low self-esteem for whatever reasonFrom sites that I looked at, this is one of the hinderances, but not the primary cause. The primary cause, is, in fact, simple fear for her own saftey (her very life) and that of her children. Economic dependence, the responsibility for the children, and threats are also among the top reasons. Self-esteem isn't the highest on the list of factors from what I read. Looking back to the site I pointed to earlier in the homocide section, given the prevalence of murder becoming an endpoint of domestic violence, it is no surprise that personal safety is the greatest concern. What about the abusers themselves? Instead of asking why women don't escape from it, ask why do the men do it in the first place? First, they have to view violence as an appropriate means to solve problems. Unfortunately, a lot of men seem to think this way. Second, they tend to adhere to sex stereotypes and feel they have dominance rights. They are often have neurotic jealousy, and suffer from low self-esteem. This is only a bit of what I found upon a brief search for information. Personally I think the best way to prevent this sort of thing is to target the abuser, not the abusee, since this isn't done nearly enough. Teaching women self-defense is all well and good, but not lecturing men is a gross miscalculation.
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 8:09 pm
That would be a good thing to do, the thing about teaching men. But the thing I was talking about was for the care centers for abused women. Quote: The primary cause, is, in fact, simple fear for her own saftey (her very life) and that of her children. Economic dependence, the responsibility for the children, and threats are also among the top reasons. I had little to no research when posting this, (which was a flaw ofcorse), but I see economic dependece, the threat thing, and all that BS( saying this because I don't like it, not that I think its not true) is ultimately caused by the reasons posted above.(exclude somethings like threats,that is just fear) Like the economic dependece thing is that they don't think that they could make enough money. First off, you never know, people can go along way if they try. And even if they can't what is stoping them? A highschool degree? Why didn't people get those things in the first place? I think there might be a munber of reasons. They dropped out because they had a dysfunctional family,( it goes deeper than that for motives and what not, Its not really the point I'm trying to make so I'll skip it) Maybe they thought that they would marry a man and live as a house wife? This would be a result of thinking that they could not make it on their own, or if they just chose that for whatever reason. There are alot of different reasons for why they don't have economical dependece and all those other things. I know not all these things have to do with independece, but who knows maybe if women go and do their own thing we would have less of this. As for the age thing, I kinda knew that I should't have done that. It was being a bit over precise. The point I was trying to make is that the number of wife beatigns in my opinion will go down. I bet that their were a hell of alot more beatings of peopel in their 19-25's back in the 50's. Of corse their arn't going to be less in the 40's when people are married that long it means that they don't major problems like phyiscal abuse. I would feel better about assuming anything about age if I had credible resorces that tell me decades back, just like you said. So I guess I was wrong about this one, but what I was triyng to say ( I didn't really say it that well), is that when kids growing up today are in their 40's I think that their will be ALOT less based on my assumtions( wow, saying that makes me sound really stupid).
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