Each year, between 10 and 20 percent of schoolchildren in the United States are exposed to domestic violence. According to psychologists, such exposure can lead to aggressive behavior, decreased social competence, and diminished academic performance. A majority of parents and school officials believe that children who are troubled, whatever the…

This review of the literature on the relationship between domestic violence and adolescent aggression focuses on the added risks to the normative stresses of adolescence when the adolescent's family is characterized by conflict, the role of the family in the child's development of social competence, and warning signs of children affected by…

Several researchers have explored the role of alcohol in domestic violence and attributions of blame. To compare the amount of blame attributed to an incident of wife abuse, alcoholic (N=52) and nonalcoholic (N=159) subjects read an account of wife abuse and distributed a percentage of the blame to the man, the woman, and the situation.…

Problems related to family violence are complex and multi-faceted and involve large numbers of people in this country. A number of types of violence in families are identified initially; however, the manual focuses on the concerns of battered women, or interspousal abuse. Information focuses on: (1) the nature, causes and effects of family…

Reports the responses of families in Kansas who live with a seriously emotionally disturbed and violent child. Contains interview responses to specific questions posed to family members about how they counter the child's aggression, how they deal with acting out, how they de-escalate tension, how they rebuild the caring bonds, and how they manage.…

Studied how participation in street violence as part of criminal/delinquent behavior relates to violence within dating or marital relationships. Found that subjects were more likely to report use of violence in relationships if they were also participating in violence as part of other criminal behavior. However, half the 141 subjects had not…

Community professionals are dealing increasingly with family conflict and violence but typically have little training in this area. Family dynamics in the causation and consequences of intra-family aggression were studied in a project involving seven groups of community professionals, including lawyers, ministers, physicians, police, nurses,…

Abusive, discordant, and satisfactorily married couples were compared on self-report measures of general assertion, spouse-specific assertion, spouse-specific aggression, and spousal physical aggression in their families of origin. Low levels of spouse-specific assertion were characteristic of discordant couples whether abusive or not. Spousal…

Analyzed longitudinal data from a national survey of male adolescents, the Youth in Transition Survey, to test the assumption that child aggression represents a functional response to family strain. Results indicate a reciprocal relationship between parental and child aggression, characterized by countervailing effects. Contains 56 references.…

Commuter students completed the Interpersonal Conflict Questionnaire which asked about four interactions involving hostility ranging from silent anger to physical violence. Results showed that intense episodes typically occurred longer ago, and most opponents were known for more than a year. Intense episodes were more likely to occur at one's own…

Two studies were conducted to test a theoretical model of the psychological and communicative links that mediate the impact of the chilling effect on the continued concealment of secrets in families. More specifically, we argued that individuals' continued concealment of a secret from aggressive family members would be mediated by the desire for…

This selected annotated bibliography focuses on women as victims of violence, specifically battered wives and rape victims. Areas of concern include the history of violence, causes, statistics, legal remedies, and suggestions for reform. Case studies highlight the involvement of police, social agencies, hospitals, and the community. Summaries of…

Examined cognitive and emotional reactions to family discussions as experienced by 8- to 11-year-old sons (n=35) and their mothers from homes with physically aggressive (PA), verbally aggressive (VA), and low-conflict (LC) marital relationships. Sons of PA couples demonstrated more self-interference, self-distraction, and arousal and less…

Objective: To understand to the degree to which a broad variety of victimizations, including child maltreatment, conventional crime, peer, and sexual victimizations, persist for children from 1 year to the next. Design: A national sample of 1467 children aged 2-17 recruited through random digit dialing and assessed via telephone interviews (with…

In an attempt to measure intrafamily conflict and violence, the author introduces the Conflict Resolution Technique Scales (CRT). In practice, the way people deal with conflict is so much part of the unrealized, "taken for granted" ongoing pattern of life that much will be missed unless the respondent is specifically asked. In the case of the CRT…