What Fuels Domestic Violence?

Abusers perpetrate domestic violence every day. The stats back that up, as do the advocates in shelters who answer emergency hotline calls from scared survivors every day. In fact, one statistic says that every minute, 24 people become the victim of rape, physical violence or stalking. 

So, the question is, despite the continued, dedicated efforts of advocates, law enforcement, the criminal justice system, batterer reform programs and nonprofits like DomesticShelters.org spreading awareness, why is domestic violence still so commonplace?

Why does it feel like as soon as one survivor escapes abuse, another dozen reach out for help?

We’re going to delve into some of the reasons why abuse continues to be perpetuated, and what is fueling abusers to continue to abuse. 

First up: Parental influence. 

Why Aren’t We Looking at the Kids?

Years ago, Brian Martin, a survivor of childhood domestic violence, decided as an adult to volunteer at a domestic violence shelter where he lived in New Jersey. What he saw didn’t surprise him. 

“There were far more children there than adults.”

Martin, himself, had stayed at a shelter just like that one as a child when his mother was escaping an abuser. Shelters are often the safe places where survivors can catch their breath, avoid an increasingly violent partner, and plan their next steps. Depending on the shelter, survivors may find support groups or workshops that can help them process their trauma, rebuild self-esteem and gain real-life skills to thrive independently.

But by and large, says Martin, who is today the founder and CEO of the Childhood Domestic Violence Association and author of Invincible: The 10 Lies You Learn Growing Up with Domestic Violence and the Truths to Set You Free, helping children deal with trauma (and ending the cycle) in-shelter and on an ongoing basis after shelter life can prove very challenging for a wide variety of reasons.

When Martin was in the planning phases of his nonprofit, he says he gathered together experts and researchers in the field of domestic violence to learn how he could help fill that gap of addressing childhood domestic violence. 

“I’ll never forget a researcher said one of the best predictors of whether you’ll be in a violent relationship is if you grew up with them,” Martin remembers. 

“All of the other researchers just nodded their head and looked down. That was a real problem because, if one of the best predictors if whether, as an adult, you’ll be in a relationship that involves domestic violence is whether or not you grew up living with it, and there are no services for those who grew up with [domestic violence], how do you stem that problem? And if there’s no awareness that this has an impact, then how do you begin to even address it?”

Studies Show Childhood Trauma Bleeds into Adulthood

In 1995, a study was done to explore the effects adverse childhood experiences had in adulthood. The ACE Study, as it became known, found that nearly two-thirds of participants had experienced at least one adverse childhood experience, and those who had one were 87 percent more likely to have two or more. 

The ACEs identified by researchers included

• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Verbal abuse
• Physical neglect
• Emotional neglect
• Having a family member who was depressed or diagnosed with a mental illness
• Having a family member who was addicted to alcohol or another substance
• Having a family member who was in prison
• Witnessing their mother being abused
• Losing a parent to separation, divorce or other reason

The study found that the higher the ACE score, or the more of the above experiences an adult lived through as a child, the higher the risk of or developing chronic disease or mental illness, being violent or being the victim of violence in adulthood. It also increased the likelihood of smoking, abusing alcohol or drugs, experiencing financial strain and having other relationship problems.

But it wasn’t until 2019, more than two decades later, that the CDC released their first statement calling for earlier and more collaborative intervention in cases of childhood trauma. Doing so, they said, would reduce the risk of at least five of the 10 leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease, diabetes and suicide. 

Not to mention, say advocates, it could save the next generation from continuing the cycle of domestic violence.

Why Do Some Abused Children Grow up to Abuse Others?

A licensed counselor based out of North Carolina, Katie Lear specializes in treating children through play and drama therapy, some who are survivors of childhood domestic violence. The abusive parents, she learns, more often than not were also victims of abuse in childhood. 

It’s a confounding outcome to many—why would someone who grew up being subjected to abuse make the choice to then abuse their own partner or children? Not all children of domestic violence will grow up to be victims or abusers, of course, and it should be noted that, statistically, more boys than girls will grow up to be abusive. Still, the question remains, why does that cycle repeat? Lear has one theory.

“One reason that children may emulate an abusive parent is due to a psychological concept called ‘identification with the aggressor.’ All children love and look up to their parents and aspire to be like them. When a parent is angry or violent, children face a dilemma: Do they fear the parent, or act like them?”

Lear says that mimicking a parent's aggressive behavior can sometimes help children move from a place of fear to a place of felt safety, preserving their parent-child relationship.

She also makes sure to note that this isn’t all kids, by any means. 

“Children are resilient, and many kids who grow up in hard situations are able to overcome that stress to enjoy healthy relationships as adults.”

Martin is one example. Growing up watching his father abuse his mother, Martin decided in adulthood to break that cycle, even though he struggled with self-esteem. 

One day, Martin spontaneously opened up to a stranger and told him about his childhood, and how he couldn’t stop his father from abusing his mother. Martin was only six years old when the abuse began, but still, he thought, what kind of person lets his mother be abused and not do anything?

“I should have been able to stop it,” he remembers saying. Because of this, Martin carried immense guilt.

But the stranger told him he didn’t see it that way. 

“He said, ‘I see it as you’ve experienced some things I couldn’t imagine ever going through. I feel like it must have made you strong, and that you must not be afraid of anything now.’ That was maybe the first time that I thought what I experienced actually created a greater strength,” says Martin. “It was a very powerful argument against my beliefs.” 

Still, as Lear points out, it’s hard to surmount the idea that your relationships as an adult can be different than what was modeled to you as a child. 

“Trauma has a cumulative effect, and the more traumatic events a family experiences, the more vulnerable a child will be to taking on that traumatic stress and potentially passing it on to the next generation,” Lear says. 

Martin remembers talking to his mother about it, who had also grown up living with domestic violence in childhood. 

“She said in a very somber tone, ‘I didn’t think I deserved any better.’ She said being with [his abusive father] was better than being alone.”

How Do We Break the Cycle?

Julie Smirl, licensed clinical professional counselor and assistant professor at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., has been in practice for 30 years. At one point, she worked in women’s shelters, counseling survivors. She says there is a “high probability” of abuse continuing from one generation to the next. 

“What we know from epigenetics [the study of changes in gene expression] is that … domestic violence experienced by children will affect them and their perspectives on violence,” she says. 

In other words, living through abuse can change one’s response to violence growing up. Responses can be reflective of what the child has learned—for example, that violence is normal. Familiar. Acceptable.

Some people, says Smirl, simply haven’t learned anything different, which is why education is imperative, starting as early as possible in childhood. 

“So important. I think kids need to understand more about healthy relationships, for a start, as well as mental health issues, emotional regulation and what normal anger is.”

When kids only see violence as a response to anger, that’s what they’ll learn to do, says Smirl. 

Martin says research suggests the best predictor of resiliency in kids who have experienced abuse is to find a trusted mentor.

“Someone who steps in and helps you see what you cannot see for yourself. Someone who helps challenge a belief that you hold very firmly.”

In 2020, the Childhood Domestic Violence (CDV) Association began offering a Resilience-Focused Mentoring program to train professionals to work with children who have experienced CDV. 

This issue is still something most people don’t talk about, says Martin, who is hoping to change that, one child at a time. 

Lear says the most effective therapies for young children also include protective parents as an active partner in the therapy. 

“Children who have endured abuse often feel as though they've lost the ability to see their parent as a protector or ‘safe place.’ Therapy can help strengthen attachments that were stressed by the abuse, equip parents with specialized parenting skills to manage trauma-related behavior, and help children understand what happened to them in an age-appropriate way.”

Therapy is a start, but Lear says it’s also vital to provide support as families continue down the path of healing. 

“Families who survive abuse need support as they rebuild their lives, which may include therapy as well as support such as housing, childcare and employment opportunities. When they are placed in a nurturing environment, children cannot help but grow and heal. I believe if we gave adequate support to these children at young ages, we'd see a drastic reduction in domestic violence later in life.”

What Else Fuels Domestic Violence? Misogyny.

As a writer who has covered domestic violence for nearly the last decade, I am often saddened but not entirely surprised that there is never a shortage of stories to write about on the subject. There are always more survivors stepping forward. There is always another facet of abuse to dissect. There are always more barriers to shed light on that prevent victims from escaping.

As a result, the question in my head, at least, goes back to why? Why is domestic violence continuing despite the ever-increasing amount of education and awareness focused on it? Why does domestic violence continue despite most of us (hopefully) knowing that it is fully illegal to control, threaten, harass, assault or otherwise harm our romantic partners? 

When I ask this question to the advocates and experts I interview, one of the most common answers I get is that male entitlement, sexism and misogyny persists and those facets fuel violence against women. While women can be abusive partners as well, the vast majority of domestic violence is committed by men. Sexism inherently teaches males from inception that they should assume to be in control. The stopgap, for abusers, at least, seems to be missing—there is no one, except perhaps their victims, telling them no. So, they continue. 

What Is Misogyny?

While sexism is discrimination or prejudice against one sex, or a gender stereotyping, misogyny is more severe by definition—a contempt or hatred of women that often manifests itself via social exclusion, sex discrimination, hostility, patriarchy, male privilege, belittling of women, disenfranchisement of women, violence against women and sexual objectification. 

In May 2014, Elliot Rodger went on a killing spree near the campus of the University of California-Santa Barbara, murdering six people and injuring 14 others by shooting them, stabbing them or ramming them with his car, what later became known as the Isla Vista Killings. In a video he uploaded to YouTube prior to his attacks, he blamed women’s rejection of him for his rage.

Four years ago, philosopher Kate Manne published the book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, and followed it up last year with her second book, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women. She says she became especially interested in the study of how people define misogyny after news of Rodger’s killings broke.

The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at the Hague described Rodger’s killings as an act of misogynist terrorism, Manne told me, but media reports in the US mostly denied these killings had anything to do with misogyny. 

“People would say things like, ‘Well, he loved his mother.’ My feeling was, ‘If this isn’t misogyny then what is?’”

She says as horrible of a logic as it is, there is, in fact, logic to misogyny. 

“The way I tried to theorize it is there is this system, which I count as misogyny, that functions to police and enforce patriarchal norms and expectations,” says Manne. “And both norms and expectations have to do with feeling, as a man, entitled to certain goods like sex and care and reproductive and emotional labor from women. And it makes sense that if you have those false beliefs about what women owe to men, that there would be a common phenomenon of lashing out at women who don’t deliver those goods.”

She calls it a “completely wrong-headed but not incoherent moral system.” 

Gender Equality as a Progress Gauge?

Statistics on the presence and trending of misogyny aren’t easy to come by. Gender equality, however, has been monitored in various ways for decades. According to the Pew Research Center, 47 percent of the U.S. workforce is comprised of women and 53 percent by men, compared to 30 and 70 percent respectively in 1950. Women earn 83 cents for every dollar earned by a man. And while that number has leveled off lately, it has improved from 62 cents since 1979. If one were to equate education with income potential, 38 percent of women and 33 percent of men earn a four-year college degree, and in the last decade this statistic has favored women. 

Women are breaking the glass ceiling, however, progress is slow—women represent only 5 percent of the CEOs in Fortune 500 companies and only 20 percent of Congressmembers. The majority of adults want to see more women in high-ranking positions but six-in-ten women say gender discrimination is a barrier to female leadership, while less than half of all men surveyed (44 percent) believe this to be an obstacle. 

According to United Nation’s Statistical Division, women in the U.S. spend on average 15.3 percent, or 3.7 hours, of every 24 hours on unpaid domestic care work, while men spend 9.5 percent or 2.3 hours.

All these facts and figures point to one thing—gender equality is shifting, albeit slowly. And experts say this will effect the predominance of violence against women. Worldwide, it has been shown that “women’s equality is ….a constant predictor of both international violence and internal conflict,”  according to research published in a University of Tennessee-Knoxville journal. Likewise, a 2015 study from The Lancet reads that their analysis of data from 44 counties suggests gender inequality “serves as a key driver in women's individual risk of violence and provides insight into why prevalence of intimate partner violence varies across countries.”

What Misogyny Looks Like in Domestic Violence 

In cases of domestic violence, there’s a noticeable lack of conversation around misogyny and sexism’s role in our culture. Often, we are more apt to blame the individual abuser, who, of course, is responsible for their actions and should be held accountable. Yet, one has to wonder: what role does  sexism or misogyny play in violence, and how has it likely supported an abuser’s choice to control women up to that point?

One may argue that misogyny starts with reinforcing sexism and stereotyping. Examples include:

• Paying women less than men for doing the same job 
• Judging women as “good” or “bad” based on their style of clothing or overall appearance
• A lack of diversity in genders in certain institutions (court rooms, hospitals, universities)
• Talking down to someone based on assumptions about their gender
• Teaching boys at a young age to be tough and to conceal their emotions
• Normalizing the idea that young men should be the pursuers and primary decision-makers in their romantic relationships
• Reinforcing aggressive male stereotypes in movies, television and music

Dr. Linda Olson is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and licensed clinical social worker with over 30 years of trauma counseling. She says that she sees the male sense of privilege and entitlement play out in many of her couples’ relationships, though most men don’t seem to be aware of it. 

“Many grew up witnessing childhood domestic violence and don’t have a clue what abuse is and how they’re repeating it. It’s how their fathers treated their mothers.” According to statistics, 15.5 million children in the U.S. are estimated to live in families in which a parent or caregiver has perpetuated domestic violence at least once in the past year.

That inherited misogyny often manifests as a sense of shame, anger and denial, says Olson. Ego and pride also come into play, but Olson says these are also markers of something being “wrong” with the abuser. 

“It’s control, it’s overreaction, explosive outbursts, an imbalance of power and demeaning and degrading their partner,” says Olson.

The good news? Olson believes the pendulum is swinging. A lot of young men, she says, mostly because of the instant backlash social media can deliver, fear being perceived as misogynistic or sexist. As a result, men are becoming more conscious of at least their public persona around women, and perhaps examining their actions in a positive way. 

Manne, on the other hand, says she’s pessimistic, in some regard, about “the possibility of making rapid, large-scale social progress without an ugly, toxic, backlash.” While awareness and social consciousness is a necessary if not sufficient condition to addressing misogyny, she says her impression is that as social accountability increases, so do misogynistic behaviors themselves. People, she says, have become more emboldened, especially when men in power validate men’s misogyny. 

What Can We Do?

The solution to reversing inherited beliefs like misogyny has to begin in childhood. 

“One thing I think about a lot in terms of sexual violence is anywhere from a third to a quarter of sexual offenses in the U.S. are committed by juvenile offenders,” says Manne. “So, as well as having to educate boys on not becoming men who do misogynistic things, we also have to realize boys are doing a lot of damage even in early adolescence. It’s clear that these boys are too young to hold fully accountable for what they do—they’re acting in accordance with things they were effectively taught under patriarchy.”

We have to teach them different lessons, she says. Lessons on why they are not entitled to women’s bodies and minds, how to not feel resentment when they don’t get what they feel they’re entitled to and, the last lesson, she says, which is not often discussed, is how to teach men to share caregiving responsibilities. If we looked at stats as one indicator of this, the U.S. Census Bureau shows that a little over 20 percent of fathers of minor children, or about 7 million men, are “absent” dads, meaning they do not live with their children and have little to no contact with them. 

Can mothers also help influence the next generation? Of course, say advocates. “Women are socialized to believe in gendered roles as well, and the system they live in outside the home reinforces that every day,” says Rita Smith, nationally recognized expert in domestic violence. “Unless they are taught they have a choice, mothers can reinforce the same gender roles they learned growing up.”

She adds that men, however, have not come to this work in any substantive way, in her opinion. “And until they do, they hold much more responsibility for keeping women in less equal status.”

Olson agrees. 

“It’s not enough to intellectualize. There needs to be action. [Men] need to begin acknowledging the truth, understanding and accepting it. Yes, I have been sexist. Yes, I have degraded women. And I’m working on it. That’s how we promote change.