Deconstructing Self-Defense in Wife-to-Husband Violence

Members of 68 families with allegedly violent wives were studied to explore the nature of women's violence at home and to ascertain whether wives assault their spouses in self-defense. Accounts of children and the wives' mothers were contrasted with husbands' and wives' accounts to ensure a high degree of accuracy of the assessment of the problem and to test the validity of the spouses' accounts. Qualitative analysis revealed that the credibility of the wives' accounts of violence was highly questionable and a justification of self-defense for female-to-male violence was unfounded in a majority of cases.