Men who batter: some pertinent characteristics.

The recent literature on domestic violence has done little to characterize the man who batters. The authors report statistics on five major correlates of such men: violence between the batterer's parents, abuse of the batterer when he was a child, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and employment status. After reviewing the literature, the authors present data from 188 face-to-face interviews with men who sought counseling for their abusive behavior toward their mates. Nearly three quarters saw violence between their parents, almost one half were abused as children, over one half abused alcohol, more than one third abused drugs, and nearly one quarter were unemployed. It is concluded that professionals dealing with domestic violence need to be alert to alcoholism problems, and that there may be some support for the belief that such violence may be a behavior in part learned from childhood experience.