Family violence: an observation

Family violence has no territorial boundaries. It does not discriminate between genders or races, either. In one form or another, family violence is present in every culture of the world.

I have also noticed that it isn’t always the women taking abuse from their husbands (or other family members); in some households the men are vulnerable and their wives are abusive.

From the beginning, daughters are conditioned to behave in certain ways which seems to have contributed to family violence. Depending on the religion and the part of the world people live in, there seem to be two sets of rules for daughters and sons to follow. It is not just that gender- specific activities which are justified because of the biological differences between boys and girls, but the overall disciplinary curriculum for daughters and sons seem to be different also. And, even though sons are often raised more favourably than daughters, it is the daughters who seem to lend their sympathetic ears (at the very least) when parents fall into difficult situations later on.

The paradoxical truth I’ve found about sons and daughters being raised differently is that most daughters gain resiliency when they’re treated unfairly within their family, while their counterparts (their brothers) lose their plasticity (flexibility) and are less able to handle adversity when they are faced with it, which proves Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. So, for daughters there seems to be some hidden advantages of being discriminated against within their families.

However, I have also noticed that some of the daughters raised in that situation for a long period of time losing their buoyancy, while others had learned to accept it as a cultural thing and were able to move forward with their lives. But both groups of women, when they become mothers themselves, raise their daughters with the same treatment that they received in their families. This is the tendency that I have seen in most families which concerns me a great deal!

Daughters raised in discriminatory families (and societies) discriminate against their own daughters because that’s what they had learned from their mothers (the family is a child’s first school). I have seen this trend continuing until a daughter (or mother) determines to stop this repetition for good.

When I first came to know about the female circumcision performed routinely in some African and Middle Eastern societies, I was appalled! I was disturbed even more when I read that mothers in those countries not only allow the removal of their daughters’ clitoris but also encourage it. I thought, how can a mother tolerate such an act of violence against her own daughter? Then, as I got familiar with other kinds of family violence around the world, I noticed that mothers in many households customarily treat their daughters very unfairly.

In my view, one of the reasons why mothers routinely discriminate against their daughters is that no matter which part of the world they live in, they’re living within a male-dominated society. Men make rules and break them. Most women simply follow those rules either because they don’t think they can break the conventional rules or they do so to keep peace in their household. Fighting against well-rooted (systemic) discrimination takes a lot of courage that most women don’t have.

Even the very few who have that kind of courage would hesitate to go out in public with their stories simply because they know that they wouldn’t have the kind of support they need to win their case. They live within a male-dominated society; what can they expect?

Surprisingly, when discovering women in abusive situations, not only most men but also most women turn a blind eye. The predators know this. Because of this, when there is a conflict at work, the male boss usually wins. Within a family, the woman takes the blame automatically.

It seems to be true, also, that most households are together because of the women belonging to those families. If the woman in the household tolerates or uses prudent tactics to keep her family together, the husband takes the credit. On the other hand, if the woman is unwilling or unable to keep the family together, the family members go their separate ways and the woman gets the blame.

Also, I have found that most women take pride in keeping their families together, whereas most men feel proud only when they can fulfill the providers’ role. Further, most women feel that they’re responsible for keeping the family together. On the other hand, only a few men feel that way. Women also seemed to take pleasure in family-success more than their own personal success.

Those were the conclusions of a survey I’d conducted when I was doing my MBA nearly a decade ago. Many of the women I interviewed (in person or by phone) asserted that they had some issues to be resolved in their family. On the other hand, their husbands told me that they didn’t have any problems and were offended by my questions.

Family violence among immigrants

When compared to non-immigrant families, the hostilities within immigrant families seem to be much more prevalent than I had previously imagined. My findings are not based on empirical studies where I can show statistics to prove my point (although no empirical studies can prove anything indisputably), but based on my observations and the conversations that I’ve had with immigrants and non-immigrant people over the last 30 years.

In my recollection of those stories, an overwhelming percentage of the immigrant men told me that they left their country of birth for better opportunities, while their wives reported that they’d left their country for better quality of life. The desire to become wealthy drove most of the immigrant men to work hard, while their wives worked hard to fulfill their family’s requirements. However, in a few households the opposite was true.

Most immigrant men in my observations/conversations appeared to have the “nation building” ambition and were pursuing their careers with vigour. But their wives had a more balanced approach to life.

Also, the immigrant men in my study took time to make new friends in their host country. When they finally made friends, most of the friendships were formed around mutual activities. Most of these men seemed to have forgotten about their old friends once they made new ones here. But for immigrant women, although they made new friends easily and quickly after moving to a new society, they took years to replace the ‘buddies’ that they’d left back home.

By definition, most immigrants are young, energetic and ambitious when they move to a new country. They move to the country with the ambition to become “somebody”. They focus on their target and don’t mind working hard to meet their goal. For these reasons, they’re called “nation builders”.

In an article entitled, “Survival of Necessity Immigrant Entrepreneurs: An Exploratory Study,” Professors Elie Chrysostome and Sebastien Arcand assert that many immigrants are necessity entrepreneurs. They find it difficult to integrate into the new job market for various reasons and that forces them to start their own business. They do that first to survive and then to prosper. “Entrepreneurship gives immigrants social dignity in the host country,” write the Professors in the Journal of Comparative International Management, Vol. 12, No. 2.

This kind of entrepreneurship creates some prospects for them, their co-ethnic employees and the spill over effects of these two groups raise the overall welfare of society. But this welfare comes with costs; I will discuss this shortly.

Immigrant parents’ career choices are often guided by money and certificates. They seem to produce more professional-minded sons and daughters than non-immigrant parents. The immigrant parents want to avoid their children going through the same hardships they had to go through. They make extra efforts to make sure that their sons and daughters choose the professions which secure their financial futures. But not all children of immigrants become professional, which creates a huge apprehension within the immigrants’families.

The difference between immigrant men and women and the non-immigrant men and women I found are the ways they feel about their responsibilities, their wants and needs. For most immigrants, having a big house, professional children, money and certificates are “must have” things. Most non-immigrants also want these things, but don’t seem to want to work as hard to achieve these things because their energy levels are not the same as the new immigrants who have just started their new life in their host country.

All these “working hard”, “making sure” and“must have” conditions that most immigrants create for themselves seem to be behind the hostilities (which are rarely known to outsiders) within their families. However, we know that nothing is free of cost. There seems to be a great number of immigrants battling inside with emotional problems that eventually invade their physical system as well. Therefore, behind the nation builders, there are some not-so-fabulous stories that most people don’t know. My purpose in creating this blog is to expose these stories in my upcoming chapters.