2.4.4.7 Effects on children
Children reinforce the meaning of marriage and they are not
safe with domestic abuse. They are also victims when their mother is abused. In
some cases, they may intervene to defend the mother and so, they become caught
in the aggression. Moreover, domestic violence may cause divorce, and children
will experience a mono-parental education, which impacts them negatively
(Ruhamya, 2007). Fitting Olson and DeFrain (2000:201), one-third of the
children who experience one parent's education because of divorce display
considerable behavioural, developmental and emotional troubles and problems at
school. Such children may leave their families and join the streets where they
learn more destructive behaviours, or enrol with militias to become child
combatants (Bahige, 1994:99). According to Jaffe et al. (1990:41) and Hilberman
and Munson (1977:78), domestically abused children develop shyness and fear in
school, if they have a male teacher in whom they usually see their violent
father. In South Kivu, Bahige (1994:271) discovered that the boys who were
domestically abused could not respect their female teachers as they considered
them as their mothers whom they often saw their father abuse in the home from
time to time. Matching Sable (1992:34), girl children who observe maternal
violence in their homes are more likely to endure it in their adulthood when
they are married than those who did not experience it in their youth.
2.4.5 Culture of domestic violence
The abuser may apply violence on the victim because this is
culturally normal and accepted. Fitting Wilondja (2008:61), the culture of
domestic violence moves family members from a peaceful context into a
conflicting cohabitation. In fact, resorting to violence to resolve conflicts
is often fostered by social, cultural and even political contexts and this
eventually promotes and spreads male aggressiveness in families (Jumapili,
2009:102). An example is that justice and the police disregard domestic abuse
as they argue that family contention is none of their business, which a good
motivation for male abusers to abuse their wives in the home (Mirindi, 2003:102
and UN document, A/53/370). Presently, Simons et al. (1993:98) entail that
training and observation of violence around us is too influential and it can
reach the inner part of our heart and changes us into aggressive beings. For
example, culturally and structurally, men have long been inculcated that they
must naturally dominate, control and
abuse women, based on gender inequality (Weiss, 1973:39). The
Seville Statement on violence rejects this belief because it reveals that
scientifically, violent behaviour is not genetically programmed into human
nature, which would confirm that human beings are automatically predisposed to
aggressiveness (UNESCO, 1986:264). Nonetheless, although domestic violence
seems to have existed in the evolution of human beings' history, it is never
natural and family members should not adapt to it (Baker, 2007:1). But
Finkelhor (1994:66) and Weiss (1973:43) say that such a culture prevails since
women always close their eyes to domestic abuse, which is in fact their method
of adapting to domestic abuse because the latter seems unalterable.
| 
