Examine the Patterns of, and Reasons for, Domestic Violence in Society.

Domestic Violence is violence or physical abuse which is directed towards your spouse or domestic partner. There are many different patterns and reasons which means that domestic violence occurs.

The main pattern that occurs within domestic violence is gender. Women are usually the victims of domestic violence; and it is usually men that commit the violence. The main reason that women are more likely to be victims is because their husband thinks that they are challenging their authority by asking ‘why were you late?’ Russell and Rebecca Dobash confirm this, based on police and court records and interviews with women in women’s refuses. The radical feminist explanation suggests that within a family, men dominate women through either domestic violence or threat of it. They argue that domestic violence against women is part of patriarchal system that maintains men’s power over women. However many men don’t report being abused as they can be seen as weak as their partner has dominance over them. This can show that the statistics aren’t 100% reliable as not all cases are being reported. The main victim of domestic violence is women and 99% of all incidents are committed by men, against women.

There are also other patterns within domestic violence these include, children and young people, people that are in the lowest of social classes, those who live in rented accommodation, those on the low incomes or in financial difficulties, those who have high levels of alcohol assumption and use of illegal drugs. Some of these groups overlap, statistics show that young people and children that are from a low social class are at higher risk of domestic violence and abuse. Richard Wilkinson offers a reason for these patterns; he sees domestic violence as a result of stress.  

However there are many things which show that they can never get 100% accurate results. The official statistics show that there are two main problems. Firstly, many victims may not report it to the...