Marital Violence: Comparing Women in Violent and Nonviolent Unions

The purpose of this study was to explore the degree to which concepts drawn from North American research are applicable to marital violence among Israeli Jews. Interviews were conducted with 161 women after they gave birth in a large medical center, 29 of whom reported at least one occurrence of violent marriage (VM) during the study year. As in comparable North American research, marital violence was associated with economic hardship, with lack of collectiveness in the dyad, and with the conflict solving tactics employed by both spouses. VM women held different attitudes toward husband control and marital violence, and were emotionally dependent on their husbands. Discriminant analysis successfully classified 90% of the cases (67% of VM). The findings can be interpreted in terms of the battered women syndrome as well as in terms of a struggle for power within the family. The data strongly suggest that these may be two distinct patterns of marital violence.