This analysis of the National Survey of Families and Households confirmed earlier findings: Much of the violence between married partners occurred in couples in which both partners were reported as perpetrators, and women as well as men committed violent acts in married couples. However, the NSFH data indicated that the probabilities of injury for male and female respondents differed significantly, with wives more likely to be injured than husbands. The NSFH differentiated between violent acts and injurious outcomes and provided an (...) empirical rebuttal of the “battered husband syndrome.” At the same time, the NSFH reproduced many of the problems of quantitative surveys as they are currently used to measure the incidence and consequences of intimate violence. The article discusses the major problems with both the content and the context of currently employed survey methodology, as exemplified by the NSFH. (shrink)

Single mothers spark what Nancy Fraser calls “needs talk,” the language for translating daily life into professional practice and social policy. The author analyzes expert needs talk in 709 case vignettes, published in the United States between 1900 and 1988, in which experts turn single mothers into “file persons,” the basic unit of bureaucratic welfare management. The author shows how expert needs talk in these sources determines single mothers' worthiness for philanthropic or government support according to their conformity with historically (...) specific notions of proper womanhood. Demographic, political, institutional, and especially professional changes help explain the observed shifts in expert needs talk and the social construction of single motherhood. (shrink)