Family Violence: A Sociological Analysis

Sociology as a field of science itself has a mess, if you will, of different theories, disciplines, and methodologies. When you delve a little deeper into these different subsections or disciplines such as family violence, there is a profound number of theories, for example, Exchange Theory, Feminist Theory, Classical Learning Theory, Operant Learning Theory, and Avoidance Learning Theory are just a taste of the abundance that the family violence discipline of Sociology has to offer. Like sociology and its many theories, family violence as a discipline is relative, the ambiguity of it makes it nearly impossible to be defined by one theoretical structure.

To create a unified approach to understanding the different forms of family violence,

creating a standard for questionnaires, surveys, and interviews would be almost necessary. The standard could be reached by using a common set of questions or rules to regulate the things being asked. Such as who gets to ask questions, what sorts of questions are being asked, in what context, setting, what is the purpose of these questions, when are these questions being asked, etc. Setting these as the basis for determining the legitimacy for the data being collected by researchers for the furtherance of the knowledge of family violence could help lessen the discrepancy between disciplines and keep certain factors consistent (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, Perrin 2011). Other factors in the family violence realm that lack consistency are “official” definitions.
The definition of the word rape for example has over-gone some major structural shifts in the past few years, that were very badly needed, as shown by the definition used by Barnett et al.

“…the FBI defines rape as “carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” (U.S. Department of Justice, 2004).” (2011). The most current definition was changed in 2012 and is now “Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without consent of the victim.” (fbi.gov, 2013.). This updated definition, while a major improvement, is still a struggle between being broad and specific. While being broad in some sense, the lack of stating that only females can be raped being regarded as an improvement; it gets specific in areas discussing that only penetration of the oral region with a sex organ is rape but penetration of the vagina or anus with any body part or object is rape. There are many circumstances that could lead to definitions like this one, or the definition of family, abuse, violence, or assault getting muddled or not being continuously updated causing a case of family abuse to be dismissed because it did not fall within the parameters of a specific definition. To get a unified approach to examining the different aspects of family violence, official, regulated definitions would be a need. This would eliminate conflicting definitions across all the academic disciplines there are that study family

violence.
The many different disciplines that examine family violence have since sent out many different theories and methodologies attempting to explain family violence; but mixed in with all of those theories, the public have concocted various myths among themselves that are widely believed, almost commonplace. One of these myths is one often heard when people speak about family violence before ever experiencing it, “If he ever laid a hand on me I would leave.” (Barnett et al. 2011). The data simply does not support this statistic. If this statement were true, the divorce rates would skyrocket, and marriage rates would plummet, because a variety of couples would not be able to reach that stage in the relationship!