Domestic Violence

The definition of domestic violence is a pattern of coercive behavior designed to exert power and control over a person in an intimate relationship. This is done through the use of intimidation, threatening, harmful, or harassing behavior. Domestic violence is also known as wife assault which aims any physical act of aggression by a man against a woman with whom he has an intimate relationship whether it is sexual or emotional. This paper will discuss the sociological perspective and theory of domestic violence and will also give statistics and analyze domestic violence.
One sociological theory is that domestic violence is defined as behaviors used by one person in a relationship to control the other. Partners may be married or not married; heterosexual, gay or lesbian; living together, separated or even dating. Domestic violence could also be among members of the family. Domestic violence can either be physical or psychological. Domestic violence, no matter what form, is hardly a one-off incident. It is more a pattern of violent and controlling behavior through which the abuser enforces power over the victim. Domestic violence happens everywhere and it doesn’t matter what the age, gender, race, sexuality, wealth and geography is. It is shown with research that domestic violence is created by men against women and very often children are also affected. Another sociological theory on domestic violence is that gender is socially constructed and there are certain qualities that are deemed appropriate depending on the sex of the person and that women are more likely to be victims of violence than men. Women are socialized to be more feminine, submissive and passive and these qualities line up with the statistics given for