Murray A. Straus, Richard J. Gelles, Suzanne F. Steinmetz

• I: The Issues; 1: Violence in the Home; II: The Violent Family; 2: The Marriage License as a Hitting License; 3: Spare the Rod?; 4: Kids Will Be Kids: Violence Between Brothers and Sisters; III: Social Patterns in Family Violence; 5: The Social Heredity of Family Violence; 6: Who Are the Violent Americans?; IV: Some Immediate Causes; 7: Marital Conflict and Marital Violence; 8: Violent Families: Children, Stress, and Power; V: The Future; 9: The Social Causes of Family Violence: Putting the Pieces Together; 10: Toward Reducing Family Violence: Band-Aids, Ambulances, and Solutions

"Because of the pioneering work of these authors, we know that battered children become battering parents, that violent criminals were usually abused as children and that the dimensions of family viol-ence are wider than we had ever imagined." - New York Times Book Review "It is important to keep before us the ideal of a society in which violence has no place in families, and this book is a good reminder." - Christian Science Monitor "It is a happily notable exception when profes-sionals in such disciplines are masters of the art of lively writing." - Richmond Times-Dispatch "The most complete report to date on the issue of child abuse and other expressions of family violence." - Journal of Social Welfare"