Information for Participants

 

            Thank you for being a participant in our international study on perspectives on family violence and abuse, which we began several years ago. If you participated before 2004, many of your anonymous responses may have found their way into our book, “International Perspectives on Family Violence and Abuse”, which was published by Lawrence Erlbaum Publishing in 2004. We are continuing to analyze the responses that continue to be submitted to us, and are preparing lots of journal articles designed to provide information to the professional community about what ordinary people think about violence and abuse.

            Pasted below is the Preface to our book on “International Perspectives on Family Violence and Abuse”. Thank you for being a part of this research project.

 

Preface

 

            “Suppose someone asked you to give your definition of abuse as it occurs within the context of the family.  What would you say? Would you define abuse as beating a child, raping a wife, or neglecting an elderly parent? Or would your definition focus on making a child work, telling your wife you are having an affair, embarrassing your husband in public, or expecting your parents to take care of their grandchildren? Whatever your definition is, it reflects your implicit theory concerning the nature of abuse. That is, it reflects your informal set of assumptions about who is abusive, why somebody maltreats a family member, and what behaviors within the family deserve the label “abuse.” Although many assumptions about family violence are shared by individuals from very diverse cultures, it is also true that implicit theories as to the behaviors that constitute abuse, and the causes of those behaviors, show considerable variation across cultures. There is also variation across cultures in assumptions about appropriate roles for men, women, children, and older family members, and variation in the extent to which governments are seen as having any sort of regulatory function in regard to family interactions.

            In this book, authors with very divergent national origins discuss what is known about family violence and abuse in countries from every continent. Our focus is both cognitive and ecological. That is, we consider conceptions of abusive family interactions and the major cultural contexts in which family violence and abuse occur. The two primary contexts discussed in each chapter are the macrosystem, representing cultural and historical values and traditions relevant to family interactions, and the family microsystems in which these macrosystem forces play themselves out. The countries we present differ greatly among themselves in the availability of official documents and research findings; however, in each chapter, we attempt to provide a concise overview of the available information concerning child, spousal, and elder maltreatment, as well as efforts to deal with family violence and abuse. Enriching all of this material are the “voices” of ordinary citizens from these countries who responded to our survey on ‘Cross-Cultural Definitions of Abuse in Families.’”

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