Family Violence Against Girls and Boys in France: Measuring Generational and Gender Differences with a Quantitative Survey

We know that the gendered norms affect all forms of family violence, and that the category ‘violence against children’ has expanded in research fields since the 20th century. However, because of the lack of survey before 2015 in France, little sociodemographic research has examined perceptions of psychological, physical and sexual violence since birth in the family. My communication focuses on family violence against girls and boys from a generational and gender perspective. I analyze the data of the french survey Violence and Gender Relations (Virage). Virage is a national general population survey carried out in 2015 by the French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). The survey questionnaire contains questions on interpersonal psychological, physical and sexual violence experienced since childhood in the family sphere or among close friends, their frequencies, subjective seriousness, age of beginning and duration, perpetrators, and impacts on trajectories. Information was collected from a representative sample of 15,556 women and 11,712 men aged 20-69 living in metropolitan France. In this contribution, I describe the violence experienced at early age within the family (forms, repetition, familial relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, subjective seriousness of violence). Both girls and boys are subjected to various forms of violence, but violence takes different forms, frequencies and is perceived differently according to gender and the age of the respondents. The acts classified as violent by the researchers are not always identified as violence by individuals. Then I examine the short-term and longterm consequences of family violence on the life course of respondents. I suggest that the effects of childhood aggression are different on women's and men's trajectories.