Battered women's decision to leave or return to abusive relationships

Date

1990-08

Authors

Wardell, Diane Wind

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Abstract

A nonexperimental, descriptive, retrospective study was conducted using the records of 330 residents housed in a shelter for battered women during the year of 1984. Data were analyzed using descriptive and multivariate statistical techniques. The average participants were women who were: an average of 28 years old, married for one to five years with two children who had been abused, Anglo, economically dependent, physically and verbally abused, and abused during a pregnancy. Discriminant analysis results suggested that those women who reported being physically, verbally, and sexually abused were more likely to have experienced: sexual abuse as a child and during pregnancy, more severe forms of verbal abuse, more frequent batterings, jealousy as an issue in the relationship, and a high school education or less. Discriminant analysis results suggested that women who report they would leave the battering relationship were more likely: to be dependent on self for income, to have child abuse present, to be Non-anglo, to stay in the shelter longer, to have no identified alcohol problems in the batterer, and to have had no negative experience with the police.

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Keywords

Families and family life, Personal relationships, Sociology, Criminology, Women's studies

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