ing as the former assumption. Social factors are associated with levels of violence. A factor such as poverty need not be perfectly associated with abuse, nor, being a causal factor, does it have to exclude those who are well-off from the pool of potential abusers. There are, in fact, many causal factors related to family violence and in order to be so related a factor need only meet the basic tests of causality: association, time order, genuineness of relationship (in which no third factor preceding it is related to cause and effect), and rationale, i.e., "the proposed relationship has to make logical sense" (8). Thus either assumption--that family violence is limited to lower-class families or that social factors are irrelevant--can be equally misleading.
The other myths cited by Gelles include the exaggeration of the dimensions of the problem by those who advocate greater attention to the problem and the assumption that violence is an inevitable part of family relations. Such exaggeration tends to lead to easily disproved claims and, thereby
...