Resurrecting Victims of Family Violence

To many people today, the term "family violence" naturally conjures up images of brutality against spouses and children that occurs within the family setting. However, in Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Linda Gordon challenges this perception by demonstrating that the term "family violence" is a dynamic concept that alters throughout history. According to Gordon, family violence "has been historically and politically constructed," dependent upon the prevalent perceptions of the times and the power struggle that occurs within the family in response to its environment (2-3).

Throughout the book, Gordon successfully illustrates how the changing perceptions of the times exerted an impact on the way social workers help families. For example, during the 19th century, the involvement of upper-class women influenced the child protection movement of its era. They were extremely sympathetic towards the plight of the children and wanted to alleviate their sufferings by providing a variety of assistance to both women and children (Gordon 32). However, during the Progressive Era, the replacement of upper-class women by professionals transformed the prevalent attitude towards families in crisis. The professionals, believing that they could prevent and rehabilitate the families, usually placed the blame on mother for their failure to take care of their children. Instead of providing t

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ially, but also physically abused her. Unfortunately for Mrs. Amato, the Progressive era sought to suppress incidents of family violence in order to project the image of the ideal two-parent households. Social workers interpreted Mrs. Amato's complaint as mutual marital violence that needed to be resolved between the two parties. If the violence had occurred during the 19th century, the social workers would recognize that Mr. Amato was a violent man. However, they would only help Mrs. Amato either by reforming the husband or taking the children away. During the Depression, the complaint would have been completely ignored because the emphasis was on offering economic relief to families in crisis (Gordon 20-3). In most of her chapters, Gordon is extremely effective in proving her arguments with her interesting case studies and clear analyses. The two chapters, one on single mothers and the other on incest victims, are outstanding for their detailed and in-depth portrayal of the dilemmas of the victims. In the chapter on single mothers, Gordon points out the inherent conflict and complexity in the child protection policies of social work agencies. Although social workers wanted to help families that were deserted by their father
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Approximate Word count = 1325
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)