[Elizabeth]

It is often said that women who are raised in an abusive household usually grow up to marry abusive men, and boys who grow up in an abusive household usually grow up to abuse their wives. The friends boyfriend grew up in an abusive household, but the abuse stopped when he got big enough to hit his father back, and beat the crud out of him one day when he was a teenager. I expect the physical difference may lead to some of the difference in why girls grow to be beaten again, where boys grow to beat - as girls never get strong enough to physically stop the abuse themselves. Boys learn subconciously that hitting makes the pain stop, but girls subconciously learn that there is nothing they can do about it anyway.

Michael, I wonder if those men who you spoke of, had their punishment been to be beaten every time they beat their wives, I wonder if they would have figured out - like my friend who was being hit back - that "it isnt too cool to get hit" and stopped. In some countries, caning is an acceptable form of punishment for adults. Not everyone is psychologically the same - so just like spanking a child who only needs to be told that what they are doing is bad would be abuse, but spanking one that only "gets it" with a spanking is not abuse - I wonder if caning adult abusers would be an effective teaching tool on people with that psychology?