As intimated in an earlier statement ¹, while women are most frequently the victims of violence within families, children, male partners, and other family members can also suffer aggression and physical violence.  Such behaviour, while more common in economically disadvantaged families than affluent ones, occurs in all social classes, races and ethnic groups. Even where it does not reach the stage of physical ill-treatment, emotional abuse can wreak havoc on an individual’s life.

The removal of the stigma that has often been attached to those who have suffered domestic violence is long overdue. This process is more advanced with female victims than with male ones, who tend to be reluctant to come forward for fear of not being believed or being ridiculed.

A corrosive influence

The effects of violence and abuse within the family are far-reaching: a dysfunctional family environment not only has a corrosive influence on its members’ attitudes, behaviour and development, it has a disrupting influence on wider society. It follows that if a society is not itself to become dysfunctional and violent, resolute and multi-faceted efforts must be applied to curb such aggression. Although much-publicised cases have cast doubts on the capacity and ability of social and justice services to deal with such problems and provide remedies, the application of legal, sociological, medical and technical expertise to the problem is essential.

However it is unrealistic to imagine that such efforts, by themselves, will provide a complete remedy. What is also required is a fundamental change of moral consciousness and understanding.

Common characteristics

An analysis of the causes of violence within families will uncover, not surprisingly, a variety of characteristics shared, either whole or in part, with other instances of social maladjustment, disorder and breakdown. While some of these characteristics have roots in social and economic circumstances or long-held attitudes and beliefs, others have been fostered by changing social and moral attitudes.

Among them has been the growth of a cult of individualism that increasingly spurns notions of self-discipline, contests societal control, rejects any sense of personal or social responsibility, and elevates material acquisition and personal advancement to the status of major cultural values. The effect has been to discount moral values and leach away personal restraint and concern for others.

The withering of social controls, the toleration of the most extreme forms of aberrant behaviour in the name of civil rights, and an almost universal celebration in the arts and media of degeneracy and violence  - these and similar manifestations signify a condition approaching moral anarchy: a society prone to violence, distinguished more and more by alienation and feelings of powerlessness, lacking aspiration or vision, suspicious of authority, and lacking bonds of trust and community. Such circumstances provide fertile soil in which family disunity and violence can thrive.

The need for moral authority

It is increasingly recognized that all behaviour  - aberrant or otherwise  - is learned primarily through family and other close relationships, but this recognition does not address who is to prescribe and teach behavioural codes. We have a paradoxical situation where people expect “others” – teachers, social services, the Churches – to be responsible yet object strongly if they try to exercise any real authority.

The Bahá'í approach towards social issues is grounded in the belief that women and men are in essence spiritual beings located within the material creation. Bahá’ís believe that much of the dysfunction found in community and family life stems from the rejection or the failure to recognise the frequently unconscious ‘yearning for a life that satisfies the soul as well as the body‘.

The Bahá’í community welcomes the fact that issues such as social exclusion, alienation, environmental justice, poverty alleviation, and neighbourhood renewal increasingly engage governmental and other agencies. It welcomes the fact that human development is increasingly seen as more than economic development and welfare as being more than benefit provision. It is a matter of debate, however, to what degree such approaches are able to improve social cohesion without an educational programme that focuses on moral and ethical education and regards humankind as more than a social animal.

A programme of education

If the education process for children were to include such a programme of moral education, it could have a profound long-term effect on social behaviour. Education in the process and techniques of effective consultation, requiring as it does a disciplined approach to be successful, could provide a frame of reference for the practical application of such a moral code. In any environment, discipline of some sort, whether physical, moral or intellectual is indispensable, and no training can be said to be complete and fruitful if it disregards this element. Such a programme, with its concomitant attitudes of respect, moderation, courtesy and truth-speaking, and requirement that all participants express their opinions with absolute freedom and without fear that they will be censured or their views belittled, could establish a framework to give effective and practical recognition to the value of family unity, and the rights and reciprocal obligations of each family member. It would develop those skills of self-expression the lack of which is so often expressed in violent and abusive behaviour.

No modern phenomenon

The problem of violence in the family is not a modern phenomenon. With consequences that taint the very society and institutions from which must come its cure, it is not a problem that can be easily or swiftly fixed. Long-taught beliefs and long-held prejudices have too often provided a perverted justification for violence and abuse. Institutions which should have provided moral leadership and led in setting standards of behaviour have, alas, all to frequently set an example of discord and aggression, demoralising and dispiriting those to whom they should have instead set an example, leading them to repudiate those impulses which should uplift human life.

The need for a spiritual dimension

This does not remove the need to recognise a spiritual dimension in individual and community life. This recognition, and its implications for individual life and the wider society, needs to be accepted and applied in those governmental, social and other institutions responsible for education, welfare and the physical and spiritual care of the community. If this is done, it will provide a secure foundation for other initiatives that are undertaken to reform and improve society and the circumstances of the individual.

Footnote

1.       Ending Violence in the Family, Feb 2001