Research Paper on Violence in the Home

Introduction

In a society where everyday stress at school or work can be battering at times, and external influences are in consistent transition, your family and home are supposed to be stable, a peaceful place to take refuge. Home, they say, is where the heart rests. However, this haven can sometimes be turned into a dangerous and unfavorable environment for children and adults. People may find their home a wild battleground. For children, it might be the place they are most vulnerable to abuse, deprivation, or assault, paradoxically at the hands of the individuals who should protect and feed them. Indeed, even the elderly may have a reason to fear those who ought to be their caregivers. While violence may originate and exist in the home independent from outside factors, research has shown that violence in the home can also result from external influences such as violence witnessed and experienced outside the home. It has been proven that violence outside the home has a great effect on an individual. Outside the home one may include diverse places such as the workplace, schools, and streets. This paper will discuss the impact of external violence on individuals and how it relates to violence in the home. Consistent exposure to violence outside the home affects individuals so much that they then become violent themselves and bring that violence back into their home. This has been the case with most home violence's, people are brought up in well up families that provide everything for them, school, education, family, but as they grow up the company they keep becomes their role model and thus they end up developing the violent nature. These they take up to their homes where they become violent to their parents, their siblings, their friends and their spouses and children.

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While substance abuse, weapons, gangs, and bullies contribute to the fear experienced by many people, violence in communities and neighborhoods cannot be ignored. Despite the occasionally unwarranted and overgeneralized apprehension and fear about violence among adults and children, fueled by the media, domestic violence is a serious concern for everybody. Many issues arise from street violence. The problem of gun violence in the community is cyclical such that while people grow up witnessing violence, they get drawn to it. This may happen either voluntarily or involuntarily. When it's voluntary, individuals join gangs and embrace their activities as a lifestyle. But when it is involuntary, people join groups and engage in violence because of poverty or seeking protection (Shukla & Wiesner, 2016). Either way, these individuals carry these guns and weapons with them, bring them back into their home and consequently put their families at risk. According to Goldner, Peters, Richards, and Pearce (2011), the effect on these people will be so much that they bring that street violence to their homes. Indeed, according to Slovak and Singer (2001), rural youth who have been exposed to street violence become violent themselves. The article, "Gun Violence Exposure and Trauma Among Rural Youth," provides a grim image on the state of gun violence in America. Slovak and Singer, within this article, carried out a study that involved 549 rural students in grades 3 through 8 to determine the effects of exposure to gun violence on students (Slovak & Singer, 2001). In their study, Slovak and Singer found that 71 percent of rural youths exposed to community violence become violent or engaged in aggressive behaviors both in the community and at home. There is also the aspect of violent video games, these games make violence seem to be a cool thing, and from the study at least three quarter of the group students owned and played violent video games or owned one. This has also been factored in as a contributing factor to violence among the young adults as they grow up and wants to belong to a group, they end up joining gangs.

There has been a rise in community gun violence over the years. Every youth today has experienced some sort of street violence, either by being a perpetrator, a victim, a witness, or knowing someone who has been a victim or perpetrator. It is worth noting that this violence is in itself unnecessary but is having a significant impact on youth. Slovak and Singer (2001), indicated that 25 percent of respondents in their study reported that they had been exposed to unnecessary gun violence at least sometime in their life. This was found to be a major contributing factor to trauma, and those youths exposed to gun violence reported more posttraumatic stress, dissociation, and anger than those youth who were not exposed. With symptoms such as anger and dissociation, when these youth go back home, they bring this violence along and proceed with it (Goldner, Peters, Richards, & Pearce, 2011). In essence, there is a broader perception that rural settings act as a barrier to gun violence exposure, which is not true. According to Slovak and Singer (2001), living in a rural setting does not in any way exempt youth from violence. Mostly what happens is that when growing up the kids get exposed to gang violence and the aspect of belonging to a group that can protect them becomes a thing. The feeling of belonging leads most of these young adults to gangs that later lead to gun violence. The gangs first provide the aspect of protection, which these young adults do not have and then they get exposed to gang wars, illegal behavior among other gang related activities. The behavior turn into norms and they end up being practiced in the families of the young adults, both on their siblings and spouse's. Conversely, youth who are not exposed to violence at the community level have a relatively lower risk of being violent. This argument is corroborated by the data from Slovak and Singer's study. According to their research, only 44 percent of youth who were not exposed to street gun violence reported trauma and aggressive and violent behaviors, which might also be attributed to other factors such as poverty. According to Slovak and Singer (2001), those children and youth who were not exposed to violence in the street consequently experienced less violence at home. It is evident that exposure to violence and guns has a negative influence on rural youth and vice versa. Those who are not exposed to community gun violence are not likely to be violent and bring that violence back home (Slovak & Singer, 2001). However, exposure to violence and guns is causing rural youth to become violent themselves and unfortunately, bring that violence back into their home.

Exposure of children and adolescents to violence at school also remains to be a critical issue. School violence ranges from instances of threats and bullying to carrying weapons and shooting sprees and fatalities. Regardless of whether you're a victim or a witness, exposure to violence is linked to many behavioral and emotional problems, for example, "dissociation, depression, anger, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, aggression, and self-destructive behaviors" (Franzese, Menard, Weiss and Covey, 2017). Bullying could lead to serious academic, physical, or psychological harm to the victim, irreversible harm to the perpetrator, and a denial of responsibility to the observer or bystander, especially if the violent or aggressive behavior is allowed to continue. Students who are harassed at the school reported experiencing academic problems, and the exposure to violence decreased their capacity to learn. More importantly, exposure to violence is positively associated with the risk of perpetrating violence and aggression. According to a study done by Barboza, Schiamberg, Oehmke, Korzeniewski, Post, and Heraux, students who reported to have experienced bullying at school were more likely to be bullies in turn. Indeed, the data showed that the chances of being a bully are 34 percent greater among those students who reported to have been bullied at school than those who did not experience it (Barboza, Schiamberg, Oehmke, Korzeniewski, Post, and Heraux, 2008). Therefore bullying and violent acts increase among children who have themselves been bullied.

Consequently, the adverse effects of bullying at school go past the school compound. For middle schoolers, witnessing violence at school can be as appalling as being the victim. According to Barboza, Schiamberg, Oehmke, Korzeniewski, Post, and Heraux (2008), approximately 4.9 percent of adolescents aged between 11 to 14 years are frequent and chronic bullies at home, behaviors that are adopted from school. Violent behavior in adolescents and children includes a variety of behaviors such as threats or attempts to hurt others, fighting, physical aggression, temper tantrums, vandalism or intentional destruction of property, fire setting, cruelty toward animals, and the use of weapons. Children being bullied at school are beginning to turn around and become bullies themselves. They are growing violent and bringing that violence back into their homes to then take out on their families, the common victims in such case are the younger siblings who are powerless.

Equally, children who are not exposed to bullying or who have not experienced it in school do not suffer from symptoms that are experienced by those bullied. According to the findings of the study carried out by Barboza, Schiamberg, Oehmke, Korzeniewski, Post, and Heraux, approximately 57.45 percent of students who do not experience bullying or violence at school did not become bullies or display aggressive and violent behaviors at home. According to Barboza, Schiamberg, Oehmke, Korzeniewski, Post, and Heraux (2008), the odds of a student being a bully rises with age and being a year older raises the likelihood of bullying by 6%. However, the opposite is true for those who are not bullied. Thus, when bullying does not take place, there is a greater chance that youth will not become violent themselves and will not bring that violence back into their home.

Therefore, exposure or no exposure of a student to violence in school is a determinant of whether they will be violent at home or not. From the study, it is evident that when bullying occurs in school, those bullied become violent and carry these behaviors back home (Barboza et al., 2008). On the other hand, students who do not witness violence in school do not become violent themselves.

There is an old saying, "Show me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are." Peers have a huge impact on an individual's behavior both at school and home (Shukla & Wiesner, 2016). Some of this influence is carried on later in life, and it just depends on whether they are good or bad. Children and adolescents have a higher desire for acceptance and this period in life represents a crucial phase of transition, in which peers' roles in formative adjustment becomes particularly prominent and deviant peers assume a major role in increasing delinquent and antisocial behavior. According to research conducted by Vitaro, Pedersen, and Brendgen to determine whether affiliation with deviant friends and peer rejection could cause a child to become disruptive and violent, those with violent and disruptive friends are more likely turn violent to 'fit in' with friends. Vitaro, Pedersen, and Brendgen (2007) pointed out that early childhood violent behaviors, for instance, hyperactivity, aggressiveness, and opposition, predict substance use and violence during adolescence and are carried into adulthood. This study was done by Vitaro, Pedersen, and Brendgen (2007), which involved 375 children, also proposed that "Peer rejection may deprive disruptive children of opportunities to learn social norms. The conflictual and coercive peer interactions that accompany such rejection may also aggravate disruptive children's use of aggression."

According to Vitaro, Pe...