Vol. 6, No. 3 A Newsletter of Family Nonviolence, Incorporated September 2008
FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Welcome! We continue to come to you in order to share information regarding important issues regarding domestic/family violence as well as providing information on the activities in which we as an agency are involved. We welcome you to this issue of The Communicator.
A reminder: We have begun a Yahoo discussion group entitled “Preventing Family Violence.” It allows anyone to contribute to an online discussion about the issue as stated. If you have any ideas about this important issue, you can access the discussion group by going to preventingfamilyviolence@yahoogroups.com.
Also: You are welcome to respond to any item in the newsletter as well as to raise any concern about the prevention of family violence. You may reach us at our phone number (508) 996-1100. Our email address is info@familynonviolence.org.
Robert Heskett
Executive Director
ACTIVITIES OF THE AGENCY
Peaceful Parenting Conference: It is with a real sense of pride that we will be hosting Dr. Nancy Buck, founder of Peaceful Parenting, Inc., and author of Peaceful Parenting and Why Do Kids Act That way? Dr. Buck will be leading a day conference on Saturday, September 27th at the Community Center of Ft. Tabor, 1000 South Rodney French Boulevard in New Bedford. The cost, including lunch, will be $10.00 for parents and $25.00 for nurses and social workers who will be able to earn six CEU’s. Note the description in this newsletter and the Registration Form that is part of it.
Restorative Justice Task Force: The task force meets once monthly to discuss those contacts that are being made in the promotion of restorative justice within the greater New Bedford area. The primary emphasis at present is to encourage persons who work in the criminal justice system, especially dealing with juvenile offenders, to consider the use of restorative justice practices in the administration of justice.
Clergy Conference Task Force: The next meeting of the task force will be on December 10th at the Women’s Center in New Bedford. At the last meeting there was a focus on preparation for activities regarding Domestic Violence Awareness month in October. The task force includes members of the clergy and domestic violence service providers and the task force is open to receiving others who are concerned about the relationship between the religious community and family violence..
Citizen’s Petition: In the light of the recent emphasis upon a petition to the Legislature to prohibit spanking, the Board, although supporting a rule about no spanking, has voted to present its own petition to the Legislature. This Citizen’s Petition would make it unlawful to use belts or other instruments to discipline children. The Board is seeking support for this effort. If you agree with the petition or would like more information, please call (508) 996-1100 or send an email to info@familynonviolence.org.
For any of these opportunities, call (508) 996-1100 or communicate with us at info@familynonviolence.org.
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Calling All Parents!
Calling All Parents!
Calling All Parents!
Calling All Parents!
Calling All Parents!
COME TO A VALUABLE CONFERENCE ON
PEACEFUL PARENTING
• Having issues with the kids?
• Looking for ways to increase family harmony?
• Looking for new methods of discipline?
Here is a great opportunity!
Coming to the New Bedford area will be Dr. Nancy Buck, the founder of “Peaceful Parenting, Inc.” and the author of two books on parenting including Why do kids act that way?
When: Saturday, September 27, 2008
(8:30 – Registration, 9:00-4:00 Conference including lunch)
Where: Community Center at Ft. Tabor
(Located at the southern tip of New Bedford)
Who:
Parents $10.00 to cover cost of lunch
Social Workers and Nurses can receive six CEU’s cost: $25.00
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Registration Form (to send with check by 09/20/08)
Name_______________________Email___________________
Address____________________________________ZIP______
Check one: _____I am a parent _____I am a social worker
Send to Family Nonviolence, Inc., P. O. Box 814, Fairhaven 02719
Supported by the United Way of Greater New Bedford Community Building Mini-Grants Program
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Born To Be Wild
Above all thought, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in the process of turning into them.
(Philip Larkin, 1922-1986)
Most people believe that the phenomenon know as “domestic violence” began with the women’s rights movement of the late 1960s. However, in 1961 Dr. C. H. Kempe and his colleagues coined the term battered child syndrome to expose the unacceptable occasional or systematic physically assaultive behavior that many families engaged in towards their children.
Women who worked in rape crisis centers were very much aware that the majority of rapes and beatings subjected on their victims were not from stranger, but were committed by family, friends and acquaintances. These advocates used the term battered women’s syndrome to gain societies attention concerning the serious problems most of these women were facing.
During the 1970s and 1980s the women’s rights movement lobbied congress to provide more assistance for battered women. In 1994 the first Violence Against Women Act was passed and the greatest emphasis in that act was for law enforcement agencies to encourage their officers to make arrest when they responded to domestic violence incidents.
Society was lead to believe by our public policy makers that if law enforcement would only arrest domestic violence offenders future offenders would be deterred and domestic violence events would be prevented. We discovered, see the data below, that it is not possible to arrest and incarcerate our way out of this problem because new offenders keep on coming to the attention of the criminal justice system.
Domestic Violence in 2008
At a June 5, 2008 press conference, Governor Deval Patrick said that Massachusetts is facing a domestic violence public health emergency. At the press conference the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence (Jane Doe) reported that domestic violence incidents in Massachusetts rose 300% over the past three years. Jane Doe also noted that in 2007, 42 people were the victims of domestic violence homicides. The numbers of domestic violence homicides are up 50% from 2006, and nearly triple the number in 2005.
Begin at the Beginning
Arrest is necessary in many domestic violence incidents and arrest, prosecution and incarceration needs to continue. However, arrest is reactive intervention and not a preventive strategy. Without proper prevention programs in place, new offenders and new victims will continue, as documented above, entering the criminal justice system.
Studies document the dangers presented in dating/domestic violence/abusive physical assaults that occur in our secondary schools and college campuses. It is generally agreed that domestic violence does not begin the day heterosexual males and females become adults. It is generally agreed that the behavior exhibited by teenagers often continues into adulthood.
We are now just beginning to understand that dating violence between teenagers does not begin the day heterosexual males and females begin dating. Just where does this verbal and physical assaultive behavior begin?
The Wellspring of Violent Behavior
An intriguing new study, “The Origins of Youth Violence (OYV),” demonstrates that when we begin to explore all uses of physical aggression rather than just the subset of criminally violent behavior, we discover that the most physically aggressive population that uses the threat of force, aggression and assaults to get what they want, are very young children. Children exhibit physically aggressive behavior from birth and at age four they exhibit the highest levels of physical aggression.
And the data confirms what most parents know. Boys are more antisocial than girls. Boys exhibit more direct (hurting and harming someone through physical assault) aggression than girls. Girls are more cooperative with each other and exhibit more indirect (hurting and harming someone without the use of a physical assault) aggression than boys.
Regardless of gender or method of aggression research reveals that most children learn to exhibit less physical assaults as they grow older. However, the use of indirect aggression increases for all children as they grow older.
Recent research indicates that we do not learn to use the threat of force, aggression and assaults to get what we want or to “get our way.” Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs applies to everyone regardless of age, gender or sexual orientation. Babies are not taught to cry, scream and thrash about to get fed. Toddlers do have to be taught to be physically dominant over another toddler to get the toy the other toddler has. It appears that we have the “teaching and learning” process about violence backwards.
A growing number of studies seem to document that we do not learn to be violent rather we must learn not to be violent. Infants and toddlers must be socialized to use alternatives to the physically aggressive instincts they come into the world with. And, we seem to have done a better job at socializing girls to use less physical assaults than boys.
However, if the family children are born into, regardless of gender, uses force, threats and physical assaults, children will also continue to exhibit the aggressive behavior were born with. Children who are born into violent homes and neighborhoods are more likely to exhibit more violent, boys directly and girls indirectly, aggression than children born into peaceful homes and neighborhoods.
The above study suggests that, as they grow older, females, because of their lack of physicality and the gendered socialization process, learn to use indirect violence more often than males. Males are generally bigger and stronger than girls and boys are socialized to be tough. Boys simply continue with their use of direct violence – pushing, shoving and hitting which is common behavior among boys.
Hence, males continue their use of direct violence, because as some experts in the field note, it is far more socially acceptable for them to continue to do so than it is for females. There appear to be no studies that document that males want to “get their way” in relationships and the family more than females. In fact, evidence from the NVAWS seems to suggest that while the methods of control differ for males and females, the desire to control their families and relationships does not.
Given this data are we to believe that there is a magical and mystical age where ethics and a higher morality cause females to stop using physical aggression and they make the ethical and moral decision to end their use of direct violence and become more passive and nurturing in their familial relationships?
Or is it more likely that females cease their use of direct violence when they lose their physical size and economic power to control the behavior of other family members? Adult crime data documents that men commit more violent crime – physical assaults and homicides – than women and social scientists document that males are more aggressive than females. However, with the crime of forgery females remain just as manipulative or criminal as males in their pursuit of real or perceived needs.
The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study is the most widely read study that systematically analyzed the antisocial behavior of males and females over the first two decades of their lives, that follow children from birth to adulthood reveal that children who are not taught to cease their aggression and learn peaceful socialization will suffer negative consequences. These negative consequences will be felt by their peers, their spouse or intimate partner, their children and the community they live in.
The above OYV concludes that when children who have parents or caretakers who teach their children to control their instinctive desires to use threats of force, aggression and assaults to get what they want, regardless of gender, are more apt not to display chronic physical aggression when they enter society.
Because of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, most people use whatever tools that appear to work best – at least in the short term – for them. When children and adults continue to use aggression, studies have shown that females are more successful when they use indirect aggression and males continue to use more direct aggression because it appears to work best for them.
However, studies clearly document that, while the use of aggression may succeed in the short term violence often begets more violence. Serious and lethal violence is far more often the result of direct aggression than indirect aggression regardless of gender.
