RE: Letter from a Wife an
This is as late as they had stats for.
Based on responses from approximately 26,000 people, an estimated 7% of adults (equivalent to about 690,000 women and 549,000 men in Canada) experienced some form of violence in their marriage or common-law relationship in the five years prior to the 1999 General Social Survey.
Women Can be Abusive too
As long ago as 1981, Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz discovered some of the data referred to by Kelly, reporting it in "Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family." Nearly 180 million women were assaulted annually by their husbands that year -- shameful data that was elevated for all to see via incite-ful ads trumpeting the fact that "Every 17 seconds a woman is assaulted by her husband."
What the general public never saw, though, was the "real surprise," to quote the authors: 200 million husbands who were likewise assaulted by their wives.
In what can only be described as a conspiracy of misinformation, the data on assaulted husbands was swept under the rug. No ads were ever produced depicting the average 16 second time span between assaults by wives on their husbands.
Contrary to public perception, the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child's mother, not a male in the household.
Mothers abuse children twice as often as fathers: 40% of child victims were maltreated by their mother acting alone, vs 19% percent by their father acting alone.
Mothers accounted for 55% of child murders, whereas fathers were responsible for only a relatively tiny percentage.
Women ages twenty to forty-nine are almost twice as likely as men to be perpetrators of child maltreatment:. . . almost two thirds of child abusers were females. Given that male perpetrators are not necessarily fathers but more likely to be boyfriends and stepfathers, fathers emerge as the least likely child abusers.
Research found that children are as much as thirty-three times more likely to be abused when a live-in boyfriend or stepfather is present.
Judges error on the dangerous side by giving children to mothers and not fathers.
Children from fatherless homes account for:
63% of youth suicides.
70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes.
71% of pregnant teenagers
71% of all high school dropouts.
75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers.
80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger.
85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders.
85% of all youths sitting in prisons.
90% of all homeless and runaway children.
You might think a "loving mother" would want to protect her child and keep him from becoming one of the above statistics, but in most cases you would be wrong.
Mothers are exposing children to the above risks:
Angry mothers sabotage a father's efforts to visit their children.
Few children are satisfied with the amount of contact with their fathers.
The mother was the greatest obstacle to having more frequent contact with the children.
37.9% of fathers have no access/visitation rights.
40% of mothers reported that they had interfered with the non-custodial father's visitation on at least one occasion, to punish the ex-spouse.
50% of mothers "see no value in the father`s continued contact with his children...."
70% of fathers felt that they had too little time with their children.
77% of non-custodial fathers are NOT able to "visit" their children, as ordered by the court, as a result of visitation interference by the mother.
89% of mothers don't value their husband's input when it comes to handling problems with their kids.
Non-compliance with court ordered visitation is 300% more common than non-compliance with court ordered child support and impacts the children of divorce even more.
Basically violence happens on both sides, and violence solves nothing. If your children are exposed and recieve violence growing up, good chances they will be doing the same when they grow up. Hitting kids and spouses is very very wrong and no need for it. There are better ways to solve the problems.
So if you hit your kids stop, if you hit your spouse stop. If you feel the urge to do either leave your home to calm down and go see a counsellor or other form of professional help.
Take Sweden for example they banned "spanking" in the late 70's and they have substantially lower rates of domestic abuse compared to North America.
I can just imagine her telling that to the next victim that decides to go back to their abuser. She could end it with a Red Foreman "Dumbass!"
