by Donald G. Dutton

About the author: Donald G. Dutton has been researching and working with assaultive men for over twenty years and is the author of several books on domestic violence.

As a result of my studies, I have found that the biggest childhood contributors to wife assault, in order of importance, are: feeling rejected by one’s father, feeling a lack of warmth from one’s father, being physically abused by one’s father, being verbally abused by one’s father, and feeling rejected by one’s mother. (I had expected that the relationship with mother would have been the more important, but that wasn’t the case.) A cold, absent, and intermittently abusive and shaming father produces a boy with...