Environmental factors in housing habitability as determinants of family violence

In approaching the issue of family violence, most specialists acknowledge the crucial influence of environmental factors on the emergence and sustenance of such a type of interpersonal violence. The Ecological Model of human development assumes that people's violence at home is influenced by a number of overlapping contextual levels, from the most proximal microsystem, containing the house and the family, to the most global macrosystem including social norms and cultural conventions. In turn, Crimen Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), one more theoretical perspective, establishes that a proper household design is a deterrent against aggressions from sources outside residential settings. However, neither the Ecological Model nor CPTED have so far addressed the topic of the effect of habitability conditions on family violence. A number of authors have suggested that housing habitability is an important factor for quality of life, family functioning and a potential inducer of domestic violence. Household habitability is also assumed to determine family's quality of life and interrelations; subsequently, it could influence parents-children interactions as well as marital/couple functioning. Housing habitability is conceived as the set of psycho-environmental dimensions of a household. Those dimensions include overcrowding, privacy, noise, illumination, depth and temperature, among other conditions. According to a number of psycho-environmental authors, negative conditions in housing habitability could be inductive of family violence through the generation of stress and related situations that predispose aggressive interactions. In spite of this suggestion, no empirical studies have been so far conducted for addressing the relation between psycho-environmental factors of housing habitability and family violence. The aim of this chapter is to present antecedents and results of a study on housing habitability and its impact on family child maltreatment and interpartner abusive behaviors. After reviewing theories and previous research on housing habitability and family relations, methods, results and conclusions of an empirical study are presented. Scales investigating negative habitability conditions (poor illumination, lack of privacy, lack of depth, noise, and extreme temperature) were administered to participants (200 Mexican housewives) at their households. In addition, they responded to an instrument investigating child maltreatment and interpartner aggressive episodes, which constituted a single factor of family violence. Housewives also provided demographic information. Results were processed within a structural-equation model, which showed that negative habitability conditions of the household significantly and positively predicted family violence. A higher socioeconomic status correlated with a perceived better housing habitability while younger participants perceived those conditions as being worse than older individuals. Implications of these results are discussed in terms of paying attention to the physical housing design as a promoter of family positive functioning.