Socioeconomic Factors Of Domestic Violence

Domestic violence was initially defined as incidents of assault and battery perpetrated by a husband on his wife, and may include child abuse of the couple's offspring. "We define domestic violence as a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person." (justice.gov) The family was the center of this In recent years, the definition has expanded to reflect the complexity and true insidious nature of a problem that plagues society. It is now interchangeably referred to as Intimate Partner violence, as the abusers

Research says that socioeconomic factors are highly important and contribute to domestic violence. When it comes to the lower income class, domestic violence has higher rates than any other social class. As Natalie J. Sokoloff says on her book, Domestic violence at the margins: Readings on race, class, gender, and culture, “socioeconomic factors, such as (1) poverty, especially extreme poverty within the African American community, has been correlated with higher rates of severe and lethal domestic violence.” Many can be the causes of domestic violence in this socioeconomic class, frustration of the aggressor, the large families, the victim if often not educated, society’s labeling. Coming from a lower class and being a victim of violence will often suffer discrimination as well. Ida DuPont says, “as a member of a devalued racial identity, some women of color particularly African American women, may fear that calling the police will subject their partners to racist stereotypes of Blacks as violent (Richie, 2000; Websdale,1999).” Being part of a lower class, and experience racism may be the cause for many women to not speak up about domestic

Sokoloff mentions, “ Browne and Bassauk found that high levels of assaults and injury characterized their sample of homeless and poor housed women (one-third of whom had been severely physically assaulted by their current or most recent partners), the lack of economic resources seriously compromised the women’s ability to alter their environments, and that across the lifespan, the majority of these young mothers had experiences only brief – if any- periods of safety.” Social class not only defines whether there will be violence at home or not, it also plays a big role in women to report and stop domestic violence. For example, being part from the lower class there is less probability that women will speak up, because most of the time they don not have resources that informs them how to stop it. Ida DuPont says, “ many studies on intimate partner violence have found that when socioeconomic factors are controlled, racial and ethnic differences in the rate of intimate partner violence largely disappear (Hapton et al. 1999;Rennison & Planty,