Men's Talk: Men's understanding of violence against women and motivations for change

Abstract

This paper reports research undertaken to inform a social marketing campaign targeting men’s violence towards women in a city in northern England. Eighty-four men drawn from community groups participated in 15 focus groups. Participants struggled with wider definitions of domestic abuse and resisted depictions of men as wholly responsible for domestic violence. The potential loss of the relationship with children and, to a lesser degree, the relationship with their partner were identified as powerful incentives for changing abusive behavior. Men were particularly affected by the prospect of damage to their own self-image that children’s perceptions of their fathers’ violence conveyed.