by Richard J. Gelles

About the author: Richard J. Gelles holds the Joanne and Raymond Welsh Chair of Child Welfare and Family Violence at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work.

Imet Alan and Faith nearly twenty-five years ago. I was in the process of interviewing men and women on what was then both a taboo topic and an issue that had been treated as an unmentionable personal trouble—violence in the family. I was one of the first researchers in the United States to attempt to study the extent, patterns, and causes of what I then called “conjugal violence,” and what today advocates label “domestic violence.” There was precious little research or information to guide my study—the entire scientific literature was...