Family violence soars

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For 22 years, domestic violence experts have estimated that a staggering number of children — between 3 million and 10 million — live in homes where violence occurs.

A new study has updated — and increased — that number, to 15.5 million children, including 7 million who live in homes with "severe" violence between adult partners.

Experts in domestic violence say these new numbers are an overdue recalibration of the tragic reality they see.

But the study, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, may also reopen a long-festering ideological argument about whether men or women are the most violent in the home.

The study found that, contrary to public perception, women committed more acts of violence than their male partners in 11 overall categories of violence. Specifically, women were more likely than men to throw something, push, grab, shove, slap, kick, bite, hit or threaten a partner with a knife or gun.

However, men were more likely than women to commit "severe" acts of violence, such as beating, choking, burning, forcing sex or actually using a knife or gun on their partners.

When minor and major acts of violence were tallied, female-to-male violence accounted for 18.2 percent of overall violence and 7.5 percent of severe violence. Male-to-female violence accounted for 13.7 percent of overall violence and 8.6 percent of severe violence.

The study, which is based on an interviews with 1,615 married or cohabiting couples and extrapolated nationally using census data, found that 21 percent of couples reported domestic violence. Around 60 percent of these homes contained minor children, which allowed researchers to estimate the national numbers of children living in homes with some violence to severe violence, updating much lower earlier estimates.

The new, larger estimate "has serious implications for policy and practice," said Steven Marans, director of the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence at the Yale University Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn.

Children exposed to domestic violence often develop antisocial behaviors; have problems with social skills, learning and "emotional regulation; and are more likely to be involved in domestic violence as adults, said Mr. Marans.