Read the Book(Uploaded) and write about the questions(each 1150~200 words)
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in a moment of anger, and my hands accidentally wrapped around my daughter’s wind- pipe” (LeDuff 2003).
Marital or Intimacy Rape. Sociologists have found that marital rape is more common than is usually supposed. For example, between one-third and one-half of women who seek help at shelters for battered women are victims of marital rape (Bergen 1996). Women at shelters, however, are not representative of U.S. women. To get a better an- swer of how common marital rape is, sociologist Diana Russell (1990) used a sampling
Two Sides of Family Life 331
“Why Doesn’t She Just Leave?” The Dilemma of Abused Women “Why would she ever put up with violence?” is a ques- tion on everyone’s mind. From the outside, it looks so easy. Just pack up and leave.“I know I wouldn’t put up with anything like that.”
Yet this is not what typically happens. Women tend to stay with their men after they are abused. Some stay only a short while, to be sure, but others remain in abu- sive situations for years.Why?
Sociologist Ann Goetting (2001) asked this question, too. To learn the answer, she interviewed women who had made the break. She wanted to find out what it was that set them apart. How were they able to leave, when so many women couldn’t seem to? She found that
1. They had a positive self-image. Simply put, they believed that they deserved better.
2. They broke with old ideas. They did not believe that a wife had to stay with her husband no matter what.
3. They found adequate finances. For some, this was easy. But others had to save for years, putting away just a dollar or two a week.
4. They had supportive family and friends. A support network served as a source of encouragement to help them rescue themselves.
If you take the opposite of these four characteristics, you can understand why some women put up with abuse: They don’t think they deserve anything better, they believe it is their duty to stay, they don’t think they can make it financially, and they lack a supportive network.These four factors are not of equal importance to all women, of course. For some, the lack of finances is the most im- portant, while for others, it is their low self-concept.The lack of a supportive network is also significant.
There are two additional factors: The woman must define her husband’s acts as abuse that warrants her leaving, and she must decide that he is not going to change. If she defines her husband’s acts as normal, or
perhaps as deserved in some way, she does not have a motive to leave. If she defines his acts as temporary, thinking that her husband will change, she is likely to stick around to try to change her husband.
Sociologist Kathleen Ferraro (2006) reports that when she was a graduate student, her husband “monitored my movements, eating, clothing, friends, money, make-up, and language. If I challenged his commands, he slapped or kicked me or pushed me down.” Ferraro was able to leave only after she defined her husband’s acts as intolerable abuse—not simply that she was caught up in an unappeal- ing situation that she had to put up with—and after she decided that her husband was not going to change. Fellow students formed the supportive network that Ferraro needed to act on her new definition. Her graduate men- tor even hid her from her husband after she left him.
For Your Consideration On the basis of these findings, what would you say to a woman whose husband is abusing her? How do you think battered women’s shelters fit into this explana- tion? What other parts of this puzzle can you think of— such as the role of love?
Down -to-Earth Sociology
Spouse abuse is one of the most common forms of violence. Shown here are police pulling a woman from her bathroom window, where she had fled from her husband, who was threatening to shoot her.