Item A

In Victorian times, it could be said that the family, whether middle-class or working-class, was truly patriarchal. During the 19th century, married women were increasingly excluded from paid work, so the husband was often the sole breadwinner. Violence by men against their wives was apparently widespread. Divorce, for the few middle-class couples who could afford it and who were prepared to face the stigma it brought, was granted more readily to men than to their wives. Similarly, for a middle-class woman of property, marriage meant placing all her worldly goods under her husband’s sole control; in law, a married woman’s status was little different from that of a child. Children themselves had few rights indeed, and neglect and abuse were commonplace. Child labour, though gradually restricted by laws, remained important throughout the 19th century.

Item B

Domestic violence accounts for about a quarter of all violent crime. Catriona Mirrlees-Black (1996) estimates that there are 6.6 million domestic assaults a year, mostly on women. These findings confirm those of Russell and Rebecca Dobash (1979). They found that most of the women they interviewed had not experienced violence until after they were married. Violence was often triggered by what a husband saw as a threat to his position, such as his wife failing to cook his food in the way he preferred it. Dobash and Dobash claim that marriage justifies domestic violence by giving men power over their wives. According to David Cheal (1991), the police are often reluctant to become involved because they see the family as a ‘private’ sphere and assume that women are free to leave if they are experiencing abuse. Sociologists have identified other patterns of domestic violence: for example, Mirrlees-Black found that one in seven men has been assaulted, and that children and those on low incomes are also at greater risk.