THE VIOLENCE - THE UNKNOWN TERRITORY ON T HE MAP OF PRESENT-DAY FAMILY

The paper is an attempt to analyse and define the social problem of th e violence in family. The quantitative increase of this phenomenon is characterized as a logical part of the present total violence increase in Slovak society, which is influenced by the lost social security, s trong economic pressure, changes in value orientation, etc. The basic category used here in the classification of violence is age. The autho r distinguishes: 1. the violence in the family committed on the childr en (syndrome CAN - Child Abuse,and Neglect) and, 2. the violence in th e family against adult members, where the most widespread form is so-c alled ''domestic violence'' against women (woman abuse, marital abuse) . This category is the main topic of this paper. The roots of the emot ional, physical, sexual or economic woman abuse in the family, are unc overed in the original family and in the defect socialization of an ab user and a victim and the defect structure of the present family. The author offers the following explanations of the occurrence of this phe nomenon: 1. Myth of the inequality of man and woman and traditional su bordinate position of the woman in the patriarchal family. 2. Economic pressure - sociologists refer to relationship between unemployment, l ow economic standard of the family and the increase of the violence in family. The myth of social determination (employment, level of educat ion, social status, cultural and socioeconomic level) is undermined by some authors who stress the psychological characteristics of abusers. The commonsense conviction that this deviance is caused by drug abuse or by the mental disability of abusers is misleading. 3. Inter-genera tional transmission of violence. The adult abuser was often abused as a child. The abused woman could be either victim or the witness of vio lent relation between her parents. The so-called ''role model of viole nce'' can be transferred from generation to generation. 4. The social isolation and low level of social control influences the occurrence of the violence in the family. Why do women, as a victim of domestic vio lence, persist in the pathological relations? It is due to the identif ication with the role of woman, who must suffer, often it is simply fe ar, the feeling of shame, the economic or emotional dependence, the un satisfactory institutional help, and so on. The author concludes that in order to eliminate such a social problem is necessary to create an effective intervention network consisting of the interested experts of various fields (including lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, teach ers, social workers, policemen, journalists, social researchers).