Domestic Violence And Family Relationships Research Paper

The formative experiences that define a child's home life will have a lasting impact on the individual as he or she enters the later stages of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The degree to which one's family life is loving, nurturing, supportive and attentive is a substantial determinant in emotional, social and intellectual development. Accordingly, a home which is abusive, violent, negative and neglectful is more than likely to have deleterious effects for the child both while and well after maintaining residence there. This turns us toward the focus of the present study, which is the impact levied by domestic violence on children.

Over the past twenty-five years there has been an increased interest in the research community in domestic violence and the effects it has on the children who are exposed to domestic violence.

It is common for parents and their children to have disagreements and to have arguments but sometimes these disagreements can turn into abuse. Children usually use violence to try to “control or bully them” (Parenting and Child Health, n.d.) This violence usually occurs when the child “frightens, threatens or physically hurts them. It can involve using abusive language, pushing, shoving, kicking, throwing things, or threatening with knives or other weapons” ((Parenting and Child Heathen’s.) Children may abuse their parents due to the normalization of that parent getting abused by the other parent within their household. The child may use the parent that abusing the other parent as a model for the way they should act towards their parent as well and justify their actions simply as something that they observed in their household. The violence that children commit against their parents affects that subsystem because it leaves it broken. There is a strain within the parent and child relationship that forms a direct result of constant conflict and abuse between the child and parent. Sometimes, in child-child relationships, an older sibling may become “more aggressive” with their younger sibling because of the abuse that they have witnessed and been exposed to. (Fantuzzo, Mohr, 1999) The children can become socialized by the parents to believe that

This is very sensitive topic for me. I grew up watching my mother get beat by her second husband for nearly 3 years. I used to believe as a kid that only my family I went through this. And honestly I wish that were true, but studies regrettably show that 3 to 4 million children between the ages of 3 and 17 witness domestic violence each year. Government statistics say that 95% of domestic violence cases involve women victims of male partners. Child exposure to aggressive behavior at home has additionally been connected to poor school execution. Kids who grow up with aggressive behavior at home may have debilitated capacity to focus and trouble in finishing school work. Additionally youngsters who have been presented to abusive behavior at home frequently learn dangerous lessons about the utilization of savagery and force when seeing someone in a relationship. They may discover that it is satisfactory to apply control or mitigate stress by utilizing viciousness, or that brutality is somehow connected to articulations of closeness and fondness. These lessons can have an intense negative impact on a kid in social circumstances and connections all through youth and in later

Because most victims of domestic violence are mothers, these battered women often fail to play a very important role in raising their children. When their children need them, they can not be emotionally available and responsive because they have to deal with their own battles. They often feel frustrated, helpless and fearful, often shutting themselves off from family and the rest of the world. Unfortunately, children raised by such parents often experience tension and lack of trust. They feel powerless, and they rarely know what to expect from interpersonal relationships.

Edleson (1999) describes adult-to-adult domestic violence as a wide range of events, such as the child directly viewing the violence, hearing it, being used as a tool of the perpetrator, and experiencing the aftermath of violence. For example, a perpetrator hitting or threatening a child while in his or her mother’s arms, taking the child hostage to force the mother’s return to the home, using a child as a physical weapon against the victim, forcing the child to watch assaults against the mother or to participate in the abuse, and using the child as a spy or interrogating him or her about the mother’s activities (pg. 4). As a result of the high prevalence of domestic violence and the increased likelihood that children will be exposed to

Being 8 years old and growing up witnessing domestic violence in my household was hard. “About 70% of domestic violence between couples goes unreported (S.N)” The reason the rate is so high is because fear overcomes the victim. The lack of someone being able to sit down and talk without being scared of getting home and getting beaten by their partner is bad, the reason of not being able to just sit down and talk to someone just to let everything out and get it off your mind and put an end to it is the reason children grow up witnessing the violence in their household. Many people think that the person being abused is the only victim in households with domestic violence

“Children living with domestic violence suffer emotional and psychological trauma from the impact of living in a household that is dominated by tension and fear. These children will see their mother threatened, demeaned or physically or sexually assaulted.” (Impact of Domestic Violence on Children and Young People, 2016)

Domestic violence affects the development of children as they grow up that can cause them to go into harmful relationships. Children could either become the victim or the abuser. As the victim, they could potentially accept abuse easier than a child who did not come from a domestic violence home because they experienced it as a child and most likely think that it has to be accepted. They allow the abuse to continue because they feel like they are missing something. Statistically, those coming from domestic violence homes have more chances of going into the same situation as adults. “Females ages sixteen to twenty-four are three times more vulnerable to domestic violence, every fifteen seconds a woman is beaten to death by an abuser. More than

Domestic violence is a problem occurring in families that affects not only adults, but also their children. Domestic violence is characterized by behaviors that “physically harm, arouse fear, prevent a partner from doing what they wish or force them to behave in ways they do not want” (“Abuse Defined”). With this being said, children can definitely be victims of domestic violence and it happens more frequently than one may think. Children are often fearful, manipulated, and forced to behave in ways they may not want to. For those children that are victims, domestic violence can become a lifelong problem (Callahan). What they experience in childhood is more often than not carried with them throughout their lives.

There is a popular saying that “If you teach a child the way to go, when he grows old, he will not depart from it’ And there is also a popular theory that says that people will learn what they see. We are talking about the formative years of a child’s life here. Is there then any wonder that the empirical evidence here below holds true. In this study, the empirical evidence shows that children who have seen domestic violence have more psychological and behavioral problems as opposed to children who have not witnessed abuse (Kitzman, Gaylord, Holt, & Kenny, 2003; Moylan et al., 2010; Wolfe, Crooks, Lee, McIntyre-Smith, & Jaffe, 2003). Furthermore, children who have observed domestic violence display more

McGee’s (2000:70) research showed, that for several children, the influence of living with fear and intimidation on a regular basis is more disturbing than the effects of specific violent incidents. Fear is the most mutual impact of domestic violence on children (McGee 2000:70). Children are more afraid of their fathers’ (or their mother’s partners’) unpredictability, they do not know what is going to happen or what he will do next. Children can also demonstrate more specific fears, in regards to the violence for example, they may fear for their own safety daily or certainly their life.

Domestic violence has grown to become a prevalent issue within households in the United States. Being such a great issue, we come to question the percentage of children affected and the impact it has on their social development and interaction with others. It is crucial for us to understand and recognize the long term effects that domestic violence can have on adolescents.

Holmes, when a child is exposed to domestic violence at an early age, that child adapts to these adverse circumstance and situations (Holmes, 2013). Therefore, children who are regularly exposed to domestic violence may initially display less aggressive behaviors than children who are never exposed. However, this is due to their fear of being a victim of a physical assault (Holmes, 2013). This finding was interesting because it shows how deeply the children are affected by exposure to domestic violence. The children become so afraid of potentially becoming victims of physical abuse that they will demonstrate good behavior inside the home. However, the effect of the exposure is fully revealed when these children are not in the presence of the abuser and cannot be potentially punished. These children have become accustomed to their violent home conditions and while children who were never exposed to domestic violence may progressively decrease their aggressive behavior over time, those who were exposed will escalate their aggressive behavior. This constant rise in aggressive behaviors will likely continue into their adolescent years and cause an influx of social problems (Holmes, 2013).

Children are negatively impacted by the surrounding of domestic violence in multiple ways, in which need to be identified. The audience that needs to be aware of domestic abuse’s effects on children is adults that care for children; such as pediatricians, teachers, counselors, and parents. The issue that needs to be addressed is the negative effects on children involved in a domestic violence situation.