Sociology 1201
• Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention
Project: 1980: After a particularly brutal
domestic homcide, founders set out to
reform police, court and human services
response to domestic violence
• Activists from battered women’s
movement around the country invited to
Duluth to help build guidelines for
counselors to use in court-mandated grps
Questions from the standpoint
of women who are battered
• Why is she the target? How does his
violence impact the balance of power in
their relationship? What did he think he
could change by hitting her? Why does he
assume he’s entitled to have power in the
relationship? How does the community
support his use of violence against her?
Assumptions of curriculum
• Violence and its threat are used to control
other person’s behavior
• A continuing force in the relationship
– Not cyclical but ongoing
– Intention to gain control over partner’s
actions, thoughts, and feelings
– Learn these tactics in families of origin and in
the culture
– “Out of control” with a purpose: See power
and control wheel (schedule, week 14)
Cultural scripts
• “You can’t have two captains for one ship”
• “If I don’t control my child/partner/wife,
she’ll control me.”
• “God made man first…”
• “This is my child…”
Abusers are capable of
personal transformation
• Not all are alike; some show no apparent
remorse, others are truly appalled at their
behavior.
– Must be held personally responsible by a
community
– Must have an environment that is nonjudgmental, nonviolent, and respectful of
women and children
– Must be willing to work through a long
process in which he becomes accountable
– Equality wheel
Women’s violence
• “Women’s violence toward their male
partners that is neither in self-defense nor
in response to being battered is rare but
can still be very dangerous. During its first
ten years DAIP worked with just under 100
women who physically assaulted their
partners(3.5% of offenders). In seven
cases, the men “were being pursued and
terrorized by their partners and were
unable to leave the situation.”
How could the program be
evaluated?
• Suggestions from class
• Would love to be able to access reliable
information on the changes in the rate of
domestic violence in Duluth over the years
the program has operated, including
partners murdered
Popenoe, “The Future of Marriage
in America,” 2007
The National Marriage Project, Rutgers
University (http://marriage.rutgers.edu/)
“Marriage is now based almost entirely on
close friendship and romantic love, mostly
stripped of the economic dependencies,
legal and religious restrictions, and
extended family pressures that held
marriages together for most of human
history.”
The past decade
• “There can be no doubt the institution of
marriage has continued to weaken in
recent years.” Popenoe
– Fewer American adults are married.
– More divorced or remaining single.
– More children born out of wedlock (40%)
– More living with stepfamilies, with cohabiting
but unmarried adults, or with a single parent.
Marriage gap
• People who have completed college
(around 25% of the population) have
higher marriage rates and lower divorce
rates
– 16.5% of college educated women divorced
within 10 years of marriage
– 46% of high school dropouts
But there’s also a fertility gap
• 24% of college educated women 40-44
are childless
• Only 15% of women that age who didn’t
finish high school are childless
• Therefore more of our kids are growing up
in the circumstances in which marriages
are more fragile.
Red states vs. blue states
• Red states more conservatively religious.
People marry younger(and more often),
cohabit less, and have more children.
• But people in red states also more apt to
divorce and more apt to have children
outside marriage.
• What if we control for race?
Marriage and happiness
• If we have less marriage than in the past,
are those that remain of higher quality and
more happiness.
• Since 1973, the General Social Survey
has periodically asked a cross section of
married Americans to rate their marriages
as either “very happy,” “pretty happy,” or
“not too happy.” The trend has been
modestly down over the last 25 years.
U.S. and Western Europe
• 10% of Americans agree marriage is an
outdated institution, compared with 26% in
UK and 36% in France
• 10% of Americans cohabiting vs. 33% in
Sweden
• But U.S. and Eastern European nations
trending in the same direction as Western
Europe.
U.S. “leads” in single mother
families
• New Zealand, Canada, and five European
countries catching up
• Could our high immigration rates reverse
these trends toward weaker marriages
– Largest immigrant group Hispanic
• Unwed birth percentage in this group jumped from
19% in 1980 to 48% in 2005
• Hispanics have same divorce rate as nonHispanics
David Popenoe
• “So if we are moving in the direction of the
of the more negative family trends of other
modern nations, and they are moving in
the direction of our negative trends, where
does this leave us?”
What can be done?
• “The institution of marriage needs to be
promoted at all levels of society,
particularly the families, the schools, the
churches, the nonprofit sector, and the
government.”
“Young people need to be continually
made aware of how many benefits
married life brings, both for themselves
and for their children.”