If you or a loved one are a victim of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at for confidential assistance from trained advocates. For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database. Learn the best ways to manage stress and negativity in your life. Updated May 14, Motivations for intimate partner violence in men and women arrested for domestic violence and court referred to batterer intervention programs.
Partner Abuse. National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence. Understanding men who batter. From vigilance to violence: Mate retention tactics in married couples. J Pers Soc Psychol. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page.
These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. Table of Contents View All. Table of Contents. All About Control. Emotional abuse includes undermining a person's sense of self-worth through constant criticism; belittling one's abilities; name-calling or other verbal abuse; damaging a partner's relationship with the children; or not letting a partner see friends and family.
You may be in an emotionally abusive relationship if your partner:. You may be in a physically abusive relationship if your partner:. Sexual abuse : involves forcing a partner to take part in a sex act when the partner does not consent. You may be in a sexually abusive relationship if your partner:. Stalking involves any pattern of behavior that serves no legitimate purpose and is intended to harass, annoy, or terrorize the victim.
Typical stalking activities include repeated telephone calls, unwelcome letters or gifts by mail, surveillance at work, home and other places that the victim is known to frequent. Stalking usually escalates. Note : Keep in mind that a survivor often makes several attempts to leave the abusive relationship before succeeding.
Skip to main content. Toggle navigation Welcome to the United Nations. Outreach workers in Syria are worried about the vulnerability of women and girls under curfew. What Is Domestic Abuse? Anyone can be a victim of domestic violence, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, faith or class Victims of domestic abuse may also include a child or other relative, or any other household member.
Are You Being Abused? Research has shown that disclosure of partner violence is highly influenced by interviewer factors as well as privacy and context of the interview--factors that are more difficult to control in national surveys designed for other purposes [ 16 , 25 , 26 ].
For this reason, underreporting and misclassification of abuse cases may have obscured some of the associations in the DHS analysis. Our analysis confirms that completing secondary education has a protective effect on IPV risk, whereas primary education alone fails to confer similar benefits [ 27 ].
Results suggesting increased protection when both women and their partners complete secondary education, and those pointing towards increased IPV risk where there is disparity in educational attainment, confirm the importance of promoting equal access to education for boys and girls, as recommended by target 4 of the Gender Equality Goal of the Millennium Development Goals.
Even if it is not an independent or proximate risk factor but one that is partially confounded by or mediated through other factors as suggested by the multivariate analysis , socioeconomic status of households should be taken into account when designing and targeting IPV intervention programmes [ 27 ]. Early life experiences of abuse including the physical abuse of boys and the sexual abuse of girls emerge as consistently strong risk factors for IPV.
In order to intervene in this inter-generational cycle of abuse, interventions must address childhood abuse and respond appropriately to children who have witnessed IPV against their mothers. Although the importance of the sexual abuse of children and the witnessing of marital violence by children has been documented in other studies, the potential importance of the physical abuse of boys has received less attention and merits further exploration.
The consistent association between IPV and other forms of violence against women also point to the need for integrated responses to violence across sectors and programmes [ 30 , 31 ].
For example, programming to support children exposed to marital violence, may help reduce their risk of violence in later life. Male behaviours commonly associated with 'traditional' masculinity [ 32 ], such as having many sexual partners, controlling female behaviour, and fighting other men, are strongly associated with IPV across all sites. Women having children from another partnership, or, in some settings, working when her partner does not, also appear to increase her risk of IPV.
These results highlight the need to engage with men and women to challenge norms around what is expected of, and deemed acceptable behaviour for both men and women. Promising research from Brazil, South Africa and Uganda highlights the potential impacts on partner violence, of programmes that tackle models of masculinity and address issues of gender norms [ 33 ].
Problematic alcohol use, among both women and their partners, is consistently and strongly associated with IPV. While it is difficult to establish the temporality of the observed associations, this relationship has been repeatedly been demonstrated in studies of IPV [ 12 , 34 — 36 ]. Health services, police and addiction programmes may therefore provide important entry points to identify and refer people who may be at risk of IPV.
Interventions that try to address and change cultural norms supportive of excessive alcohol use might also be expected to have knock-on effects in terms of primary violence prevention [ 37 ].
Importantly, not all variables demonstrated consistent relationships with IPV across sites, suggesting that policymakers should be cautious about any 'one model fits all' approach to IPV prevention. For example, risk associated with age disparity among partners, a woman working where her partner does not, and a woman taking an active role in choosing her partner, varies by setting.
What constitutes empowerment in one setting may represent an unacceptable transgression of gender norms elsewhere. Jewkes highlights that transgression of gender norms and failure to fulfil cultural expectations of good womanhood and successful manhood are among the most important triggers for intimate partner violence [ 19 ].
She argues that what constitutes a transgression may vary by setting, thus leading to cross-national variation in the behaviours that may emerge as risk factors. The fact that we sometimes but not invariably observe increased IPV risk associated with the higher relative status of a woman for example if she works and her partner does not can also be interpreted in the light of theories that risk of partner violence may increase during periods of transition in gender relations.
Women who step into new roles before background gender norms have shifted may be at increased risk of violence [ 38 ]. It is thus important that prevention efforts engage with both men and women [ 19 ]. The primary strength of our analysis is that it is based on fully comparable data from 15 culturally, economically and socially diverse sites. This type of comparison has not been possible to date in the field of IPV research, with the exception of the less tightly controlled DHS surveys.
Obviously, the cross-sectional nature of this study limits the extent to which we can draw conclusions regarding temporality or the causal nature of observed associations.
However, by distinguishing between early life and current characteristics, we do separate out those factors where temporality is clear from those where it is less certain. A further limitation is that the study interviewed only women, and hence relies on women's reports of their partner's characteristics. The data on partner characteristics refers to the woman's current or most recent partner, who in some cases may not be the perpetrator of the reported violence.
Since the analysis considers only past year IPV, however, the number of cases where the reported violence was perpetrated by a more distant partner is likely to be small. Any resulting misclassification would bias results towards the null rather than invalidate observed associations.
The multi-faceted nature of the factors that influence partner violence highlights the need for a multi-sectoral response that combines development activities, including improved access to secondary education for girls and boys, with initiatives to transform gender norms and attitudes, address prior histories of abuse, and reduce harmful drinking. Since risk of IPV is highest in younger women, schools are also an important setting for primary prevention activities, with potential to address issues of relationships, gender roles, power and coercion within existing youth violence and bullying programmes.
Although there is no magic bullet to reduce partner violence, the consistency of our findings across sites suggests that a prevention strategy, once validated and refined, might have relevance in a wide range of settings. Initiatives to reduce partner violence require commitment and vision--by the international community, local governments and civil society. The time to act is now. As highlighted in the recent UN Campaign against violence against women--Women Won't Wait--such responses are urgently needed.
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