Men and Women Abusers: The Percentages

CAUTION!
Computers can be monitored and are impossible to clear completely. If you are afraid your internet and/or computer usage might be monitored, please close this site immediately and use a safer computer.

Both men and women are abused. Since a high percentage of abusers were abused themselves as children, it stands to reason that a lot of children grow up to abuse their partners, spouses and children. I am not blaming or excusing, but I am recognizing that there is an endless cycle of abuse from generation to generation and it must be stopped.

How many men vs. women are abusers? According to a Family Justice Center statistic, 90-95% of abusers are men. The Centers for Disease Control states in a 2005 report that one in four women and one in nine men are victims of domestic violence at some point in their lives. No knows the truth for certain, because so many family violence crimes go unreported but, unfortunately, there is a historic and cultural precedent of women being treated as less than men.

My question is not necessarily about who is hurting whom more, but how do we stop it? Teaching children to respect one another into adulthood is a monumentally important factor in ending domestic violence. Boys and girls need to know that they must treat each other with kindness and compassion; they also need to know that they deserve to be cared for, loved, honored, and respected. Unfortunately, children often see the opposite of this in their homes.

If teaching children is the key to ending family violence, how do we do it? I believe modeling is an effective method. In our weekly after-school Good News Club, our volunteers model respect, kindness, and caring. As a teacher, I model respect, kindness, and caring. As a camp director and his wife, my husband and I model respect, kindness, and caring in front of hundreds of summer campers and staff.

My husband and I model respect, kindness, and caring in our parenting. Our seven-year-old son recently stepped on his dad’s smashed, bruised, infected, pain-filled toe. My husband’s reaction was less than appropriate as he grabbed our son’s arm, pulled him off the sore toe, told him to be more careful, and made him sit down. Our little boy was mortified. He had never seen Dad look and act so scary and angry. But my husband modeled humility, love, and respect by later apologizing to our son about his overreaction. We all mess up as parents, but we can show respect to our children by acknowledging our mistakes.

My husband and I model respect, kindness, and caring in our marriage. We don’t fight, but we do have occasional spats. Rather than hide these altercations from our children, we sometimes allow them to see and feel the tension. We also allow them to see the resolution. My husband and I may take some time away from one another, but we later come together to apologize for our part in the disagreement and tell the children we’re sorry they had to witness our anger or frustration. More and more I have been motivated to be the more mature one by apologizing first, since it’s usually my husband who does so.

It is my sincere hope that, in these small yet sincere, “grassroots” ways, we can do our part to end family violence and change the culture of the world.