Family Violence

1. What is the general in the particular with regards to abuse in this article? The article shows statistically that if you are male and have been a victim of violence or family violence you have a higher risk of becoming an abuser compared to someone who has not been victimized. And those family violence victims have a higher incidence of developing mental health issues and personality disorders, abuse drugs or alcohol, or have been abandoned as children.2. What is the strange in the familiar? The article shows how witnessing or being victimized by violence as a child or adolescent changed the perception of these offenders thinking and patterns of acceptable behaviors which made violence against another person to be acceptable practice.3. What might this article add to understanding global offenders? I think that it would be interesting to see how the statistics would change once the offenders went through extensive therapy. Would the therapy break or improve the cycle of violence? And by how much?4. What does this issue identify about potential social marginalization? Because these offenders have been victimized themselves they have become the perpetrator as this is what they know to be the norm for them. In times of crisis or change they would do what they know until they know better. Unfortunately the pattern of behavior has changed their view of what is normal behavior and they lack the skills to deal with change or crisis without violence. Thus turning a personal problem into a public issue.5. What does this article identify about potential social crisis? The potential social crisis in this article is that if the pattern of family violence is not broken it will be an inherited personality trait for the children who witness or are victimized by it, leading to more violent crimes and more dysfunction in families.6. After reading this article, what social change do you think needs to be adapted? I personally think and feel that violence of any type needs to be unacceptable in society and that society as a whole should speak out about this issue by providing lots of public awareness and free accessible counseling services to break the cycle of abusive behaviors.7. Who would you most likely speak out for (the offender or society)? I struggle with that decision as I can identify with both sides on one hand it is very sad that the offender had to witness or undergo abuse as a child which ultimately shaped them as adults. But on the other hand it is also horrible that society is at risk based on someone else’s poor choices therefore the cycle of violence continues.8. Apply the structural-functional. social-conflict, and symbolic-interaction theory to this article using each paradigm perspective, describe the issues of offenders. For the structural functional aspect the issues of the offenders would be that they hurt another human therefore they have to pay the price in jail. The social –conflict issue would be poor self-esteem , been abused or witnessed abuse themselves, possible mental health issues related to the abuse, eg. personality disorders and narcissistic personalities traits. The symbolic-interaction issues would be that they were raised in an environment of abuse therefore it is a pattern of behavior they know and are comfortable with and believe it is the norm to behave this way.9. Would this research be of greater interest to a sociologist favoring a structural-functional, social-conflict, or a symbolic-interaction paradigm? A sociologist favoring a symbolic-interaction paradigm because the article focuses on patterns of social interactions in specific settings in a micro level orientation. There is also scientific data to support the theory which would be of interest as well for a sociologist favoring this paradigm.10. Is this study, of male offenders only, guilty of sexism? No I don’t think so they were not comparing males to females they just gathered data from a particular group an d analyzed it based the level on violence that they had witnessed as children and how it affected them as adults. If they had compared the same data from females that would be sexism in my opinion. There is a lot of research and articles available about violence against women but not a lot about the male offenders to get a full view of the big picture it is worthwhile to look at all sides to gain a broader view of where the violence originated from in the first place.