Sociological Imagination: How to Gain Wisdom about the Society in which We All Participate and for Whose Future We Are All Responsible (part 35)

My parents, grandmother and brother were teachers. My mother taught Latin and French and was the school librarian. My father taught geography and a popular class called Family Living, the precursor to Sociology, which he eventually taught. My grandmother was a beloved one-room school teacher at Knob School, near Sonora in Larue County, Ky.

Sam Abell (American photographer)

 The Family (Part E)

by

Charles Lamson

Family Violence: Applying the Perspectives

Family researchers Jeffrey L. Adelson and Ngoh Tiong Tan (1993. Conflict and Family Violence. In P. G. Boss, et al., Eds., Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods) describe cases of family violence that can be analyzed in terms of each of the main sociological perspectives on the family (interactionist, conflict, and functionalist). Their research compares Chinese and North American families in which the wives have experienced incidents of abuse by their husbands.

Spouse Abuse in a Chinese Family Mrs. Lee is referred to a social worker after seeking aid at a police station when she was struck in the face by her husband. In Chinese and other Asian cultures, the wife is expected to leave her family orientation to take up residence with her husband and his extended family. Mrs. Lee's husband's family is dominated by her mother-in-law, a powerful widow who treats Mrs. Lee as the person with the lowest status in the family. Mrs. Lee wishes her mother-in-law would be less autocratic and complains about the dictatorial behavior to her own parents and to her husband. Her husband, on the other hand, believes his wife should conform to the ancient Norms of Chinese family life and obey his mother. He and his mother consider Mrs. Lee a traitor because she has appealed to authorities outside the family.

From a functionalist perspective, the police and social workers are representatives of institutions in the larger society that seek to help families avoid violence. But they cannot simply impose a new form of power on the complex extended family. Instead, they apply an interactionist perspective to the conflict as they understand it. The social worker convenes a meeting of the family, to which Mrs. Lee's older brother is also lighted. Together the group works out a detailed understanding of the roles of all the family members. The social worker explains that Mrs. Lee is not seeking to challenge her mother-in-law. In fact, however, the social worker has demonstrated to the extended family that Mrs. Lee has a support network and resources outside the family---a new notion for a traditional Chinese family. No doubt there will be further conflict, but power relations within the family have been subtly altered as a result of this intervention. 

A North American Family Copes with Violence Susan was a regular victim of her husband Bob's violent anger. The beatings began on their honeymoon and ended 20 years later when he struck her with a baseball bat, almost killing her. During those years their children suffered emotionally from the violent interactions they witnessed and the unhappiness their mother experienced. But Susan loved Bob and struggled to make the marriage work. Now the couple are in court because after the last assault Bob was arrested. He faces a jail sentence, and Susan has abandoned hope of making the marriage work. She understands that she must make a new life for herself. She is seeking opportunities to do so but knows that she also needs protection from possible future assault.

Unlike Mr. and Mrs. Lee, neither Bob nor Susan lives near an extended family Network. Many Americans do not live in close contact with relatives; on the average, "extended families do not figure as prominently in the lives of Caucasian Americans as they do in other subcultures and in many Asian societies" (Edleson & Tan. 1993, Conflict and Family Violence. In P. G. Boss, et al., Eds. Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods, p. 384). Bob and Susan had left their extended families in search of economic opportunity. Susan now has nowhere to turn for help except the police and social welfare agencies. The social safety net will act to protect her so that she and her children can live in peace. From a functionalist perspective, Susan will also have to rely on these agencies to enforce Bob's responsibilities towards his children. The functionalist sociologist argues, therefore, that it is a vital importance that the agencies function effectively and this and similar cases.

Susan needs the help of outside agencies to gain relief from the deadly conflict that has destroyed her family. Yet these very agency's come into being as a result of conflict in the larger society. They emerged after decades of protests and demands by women and social activists for ways to protect innocent family members from their abusers. But as we learned almost daily from reports of incidents of spouse and child abuse, it is never easy to ensure that the agencies created by society will intervene effectively. Even if they have the necessary resources, there is no guarantee that they will always act wisely to balance the conflicting values of individual rights and preservation of the family.

Domestic abuse cases only touch the surface of an immense social problem, but they offer some insight into how sociologists contribute to understanding these extremely complex instances of violence at the micro-level. Contemporary law enforcement officers are trained in the basic sociology and psychology of family violence. They understand that the batterer and the domestic victim are often caught in a cycle of repeated hostility and violence. Too often the violent spouse, usually the husband or male partner, expresses contrition after the violent act and is forgiven, and so the cycle resumes. The authorities and the neighbors believe the household is a troubled one but do not believe they can do very much about it.

In many communities, however, new policies require more stringent approaches to domestic violence. The norms and sanctions are changing to prevent fatalities and trauma to children and spouses.Gradually the focus is shifting from merely maintaining the peace to arresting offenders, protecting victims, and referring battered women to shelters and other community resources available to help victims of domestic violence. Better understanding of the dynamics of violent family interactions, more forceful demands by women and community residents for protection from batterers, and more effective techniques for creating protective organizations are all applications of the basic perspectives of sociology.

 Of course, all the training in the world does not explain why so many loving relationships become violent. On the other hand, with so much stress and such great economic, social, and emotional demands placed on husbands and wives, an even better question might be why, despite high rates of divorce and family break-up, so many unions are successful and so many individuals crave love and a stable relationship more than almost any other cherished value. In the next post, we turn, therefore, to a sociological consideration of romance and marriage. 

*MAIN SOURCE: SOCIOLOGY IN A CHANGING WORLD, 6TH ED., 2003, WILLIAM KORNBLUM, PP. 496-498*

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