The purpose of this paper is to analyze a social problem using a Problem-Policy-Provision-Feedback analysis. The social problem selected for this analysis is the problem of battered women, defined by Straus and Gelles (1990) as women who are physically and/or emotionally abused by their spouses and boyfriends.
At least two million women are yearly battered by their husbands or boyfriends in the United States (Straus & Gelles, 1990). As Eshleman, Cashion and Basirico (1989) put it:
There is no place so violent as home. About half of all rapes occur there. It is in the privacy of the home, both in cramped flats and in grand neocolonials that women are pummeled by husbands and boyfriends. (p.222)
The authors go on to note that the social consequences of this problem are grave. These consequences include not only debilitation of the physical and emotional health of the women as well as the subsequent health care costs but also the fact that children in these families are prone to be involved in battering situations later in life. For example, Eshleman, Cashion and Basirico (1989) point out that sons raised in families where fathers batter their mothers are prone to become batterers themselves; in addition, daughters in such families often marry men who are batterers.
Battering has been associated with numerous background and parenting factors in the families of abusers. According to Scharer (1979), the fact most predictable factor associated with men growing up to become physically/emotionally abusive is childhood exposure to some form of violence.
As children, abusers were often beatened themselves or else witnessed the beatings of other family members such as a sibling or a parent. In fact, according to Straus and Gelles (1990), even "normal" physical punishment of sons by parents has been found to be associated with producing abusive adults; this because, according to the authors, physical punishment teache...