Violenţa în familie: Încercare de redefinire [Family Violence: Definition Revisited]

Alcoholism, disappearance of love, infidelity and violence are among the most important reasons for divorce in contemporary Romania. If the first three reasons can be defined relatively easily, this does not apply for violence or family violence for which both Romanian and foreign scholars have coined at last 19 synonyms engendered by the numerous social changes (mainly at family level). Romanian literature (and not only) reproduces repeatedly the definition of family violence advanced by the United Nations Organisation, a definition that is far from the complexity of the phenomenon: we have in mind both the forms of abuse circumscribed to “family violence” and the “actors” of this type of violence (women, children, seniors, men). The authors believe that better knowing all these aspects could help social workers and all those involved, one way or another, in solving cases of family violence (educators, lawyers, doctors, police officers, psychiatrists, psychologists etc.).

Keywords: social work, family, family violence, forms of abuse