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This chapter explores the ways in which marital violence was sanctioned and controlled through Irish culture during the years from 1922 to 1965. During this period, battered women had little refuge from violence. It was common for a chronically abused woman to remain with her violent husband because she had insufficient money to support herself (or her children) and little recourse to the law. Due to women’s inferior status, this chapter argues that marital violence represented a social problem in post-independence Ireland: an abused woman had a socially-constructed inability to escape her husband’s violence as a result of her economic dependence, limited legal options, and social and religious expectations.

Patients are phenotypes; thus all medical conditions are a product of genes and the environment. One genotype can produce many phenotypes depending on the environments encountered. Such phenotypic plasticity promotes reproductive success by creating a better fit between the genotype and the environment. Evolutionary insights into kin selection, life history, parental investment, and sexual selection help us to understand: the origins of child abuse and homicide in step-families; deadbeat dads; attachment disorders; failure to thrive; female infanticide; excess male mortality from accidents, suicide, and disease; risky behaviour; immunosuppression; reproductive cancer; marital violence; and genital cutting. Many of these problems reflect reproductive conflicts of interest between individuals. Other conflicts occur within individuals and involve life history trade-offs. Conflicts of interest within and between individuals constrain natural selection, and prevent an optimal world wherein adaptation is maximized at all levels simultaneously.

In 1856, by establishing herself as physician, marrying George Ott and then moving to Madison, Wisconsin, the newly renamed Mrs. Dr. Anna B. Ott transformed herself. Instead of a local doctor’s wife, instead of an impugned divorcee, Anna became a successful physician and property owner. Very quickly, however, the Ott marriage became very violent and Anna twice attempted to divorce George. This chapter places Ott’s early career in the context of women’s property laws, understandings of marital violence, the growing power of and challenges to institutions for the insane, and the activism of suffragists and women such as Elizabeth Packard.

This chapter discusses topics such as husbands’ authority and wifely advice, marital violence and collaboration, and shared responsibilities. Once married the husband became the head of the household and the wife fell under his authority. Patriarchal society was based on this inbuilt inequality that consisted often in a precarious balance between the husband, having to show that he was up to his authoritarian role, and the wife understanding her submissive position. A mutual sense of responsibility for their life together was often the glue that kept a couple together. This sense of mutual responsibility was naturally stronger the more affective the relationship was. Both men and women had a role in marriage, and increasingly society recognized that durable indissoluble unions had more chance of success if the couple were compatible, attracted to each other, and prepared to give the relationship a chance.