ce is learned within a family, and a partner-victim stays caught up in a cycle of violence and forgiveness. If the victim does not leave, the batterer views the violence as a way to produce positive results. Children of these family members may learn the behavior from their parents (boys may develop into batterers and girls may become battering victims). A different sociological theory suggests that lower income subcultures will show higher rates of intimate abuse, as violence may be a more acceptable form of settling disputes in such subcultures. A variant on this theory is that violence is inherent in all social systems and people with resources (financial, social contacts, prestige) use these to control family members, while those without resort to violence and threats to accomplish this goal.
Feminist or societal-structural theory. According to this theory, male intimates who use violence do so to control and limit the independence of women partners. Societal traditions of male dominance support and sustain inequities in relationships.
Violent individuals theory. For many years it was assumed that domestic batterers were a special group, that while they assaulted their current or former intimates they were not violent in the outside world. There is cause to question how fully this describes batterers. Although the full extent of violence batterers perpetrate is unknown, there is evidence that many batterers are violent beyond domestic violence, and many have prior criminal records for violent and non-violent behavior.This suggests that domestic violence batterers are less unique and are more accurately viewed as violent criminals, not solely as domestic batterers. There may be a group of batterers who are violent only to their current or former intimates and engage in no other violent and non-violent criminal behavior, but this group may be small compared to the more common type of batterer.
Some women batter their current or former intimates. Less is known about women who use violence in relationships, particularly the extent to which it may be in self-defense, to fight back, or to ward off anticipated violence. When asked in a national survey if they used violence in their relationships, many Canadian college women said they did. However, the majority of these women said it was in self-defense or to fight back and that the more they were victimized the more they fought back.One researcher suggests that women should be discouraged from engaging in minor violence because it places them at risk for retaliation from men and men are more likely to be able to inflict injury.
Clearly, there are women who use violence in relationships provocatively outside the context of fighting back or self-defense. The extent of this problem, as we noted earlier, remains unknown but is ripe for additional study.
The theories explaining male violence cited earlier may also have some relevance for women, although the picture is not clear.
Police commonly express frustration that many of the battered women they deal with do not leave their batterers. Although many women do leave physically abusive relationships, others remain even after police intervene. There is no reliable information about the percentage of women who stay in physically abusive relationships. Researchers offer a number of explanations for the resistance by some to leave an abuser.
Cycle of violence. Three cyclical phases in physically abusive intimate relationships keep a woman in the relationship: 1) a tension-building phase that includes minor physical and verbal abuse, 2) an acute battering phase, and 3) a makeup or honeymoon phase. The honeymoon phase lulls an abused woman into staying and the cycle repeats itself.
Battered woman syndrome. A woman is so fearful from experiencing cycles of violence that she no longer believes escape is possible.
Stockholm syndrome. A battered woman is essentially a hostage to her batterer. She develops a bond with and shows support for and kindness to her captor, perhaps because of her isolation from and deprivation of more normal rel