How Violent Are American Families? Estimates from the National Family Violence Resurvey and Other Studies

Abstract

This chapter presents the rates of spousal, parent-to-child, and sibling violence from the 1985 national survey and to compare rates of spousal, parent-to-child, and sibling violence to the rates from other epidemiological research on family violence. The rates are extremely high for violence against a sibling—eight hundred out of one thousand had hit a brother or sister, and more than half had engaged in one of the acts in the Conflict tactics scales "Severe Violence" list. To understand the high rate of intrafamily violence by women, it is also important to realize that many of the assaults by women against their husbands are acts of retaliation or self-defense. One of the most fundamental reasons why women are violent within the family is that for typical American women, her home is the location where there is the most serious risk of assault. Violence by women is a critically important issue for the safety and well-being of women.