Domestic violence can be justified, according to pupils

MOST children believe punching a woman in the face is acceptable if her partner discovered she was having an affair, research claimed yesterday.

In another scenario, about 80% of the children questioned, aged 11 and 12, said a man was justified to react in a violent way towards his partner if the dinner was not ready on time.

The study by an Edinburgh Napier University researcher involved 89 pupils from five primaries in Glasgow. Three scenarios were put to the children, who were split into groups of four or five.

In one of the scenarios, the youngsters were asked to consider whether or not a man was justified in punching his partner in the face when he found out she had an affair and said she was leaving him. Nearly all of the children – about 70 out of the 89 – thought that the woman deserved to be hit.

Researcher Nancy Lombard said: “Initially when we started discussing it the youngsters said all violence was wrong. However, on further discussion they found justification for the violence if the woman had done something ‘wrong’. The study also found that girls saw themselves as having a wealth of opportunities but saw opportunities severely narrow as they became older, got married and had children.

“Young people justified violence by using gender stereotypes,” she added.

In discussions on another scenario, Ms Lombard said it was “mostly girls” who suggested that a woman should change her top, cover it with another top or wear it at another time if her partner did not like it and said it attracted attention from other men.

Ms Lombard said the girls in the study also said that they anticipated some violence in the playground from boys and saw it as “normalised behaviour”.

She said: “The old saying of ‘if he pulls your pigtails, it means he likes you’, translates into violence in adulthood which girls accept as normal.”