Save the Children…Save the World!
Children are the the future of the nation. They are what this country has to look forward to succeed in the future. But what if these children grew up to not benefit society? What if they grew up to be harmful to society and to each other?What could have caused them to be like that? Bell Hooks makes a point that domestic violence could have a negative impact on children because they see the things that are going on and see it as a normal thing that always happens in the family life. They see that men have to have their way and that they are not to be questioned and that women are showing children that it is an okay thing to see or to be. It is important to consider children when talking about domestic violence because nothing is really known about how they handle it. It is important to know how because they could potentially grow up to be like the adult who are in the domestic violence situation.
Impact on Boys
Bell Hooks says in her article that patriarchal violence in the home is based on the belief that it is acceptable for a more powerful individual to control others through various forms of coercive force. What this does is instill in boys that they have to grow up to be “The Boss” and what they say goes. There is no middle road and they would have use any type of violence to get their way. What makes this detrimental to boys is that it teaches them violence and cuts off any other road they can take to avoid it. They grow up seeing that this is a normal thing to grow up to be. This cycle of being violent just keeps on going and going and there is no end to it.
Boys who witness their mothers’ abuse are more likely to batter their female partners as adults than boys raised in nonviolent homes. They grow up to be like the abuser and that is what is wrong with the situation. They end up bottling up all of the rage and hatred they feel toward the abuser and take it out on others. It becomes a thing that never stops because as children you learn behaviors that shape how you are for the rest of your life and if they learned this type of violent behavior, they believe that they have a right to rule over women by any means, male violence against women will continue to be a norm.
Impact on Girls
With girls it is a whole different story. They learn that violence is something that is expected, an everyday part of life. They don’t question it and if it happens to them, it’s normal because they’ve seen their mothers go through it. As mentioned above with the cycle that boys get trapped into, girls become trapped in a cycle of acceptance. They believe that this is what life is and it could never be different. They don’t see how their life could be different from their mothers. They repeat the cycle of abuse and end up exposing their own children to it.
A mother who might never be violent but who teaches her children, especially her sons, that violence is an acceptable means of exerting social control, is still in collusion with patriarchal violence. They end up doing what their own mothers did and expose them to domestic violence (This is not to say that they are willingly exposing their children to violence. Sometimes there are situations where people can’t avoid it like living situations or financial situations that prevent them from doing so.)
In Terms of Gender
What does this have to do with gender? These children grow up to be these types stereotypes of violence that they can never escape from. Boys tend to display external behaviors such as aggression,while girls tend to display internal behaviors like withdrawal. Boys become violent and end up battering their significant others. They become so angry about what they’ve seen and experienced that they take it out on others. Girls become so timid and accepting of the situation that they don’t fight it. They end up believing that it is happening for a reason and do nothing to stop it. Domestic violence needs a better solution because children end up becoming trapped in a circle of violence.
