Parents’ Violence Towards Their Children Essay

Violence affects a healthy family’s relationship, state of mind and well-being, in other words, it’s normal functions. Because of violence, children are forced to endure and cope with mental, physical and emotional trauma leading to a display of impacts on health, development, and wellbeing. The effects build up over time and can impact on every aspect of their life.  How many children and innocent lives must suffer from something unnecessary? Imagine walking into a home late at night to find a child hiding in a corner, with a bloody face and cuts all around their body saying they were self-inflicted or making up other silly excuses like falling down the stairs out of extreme fear. Up to 75% of all acts of domestic violence occurs between the ages 18-24. No child should ever see domestic violence as normal because the moment that happens a future perpetrator has been born. We need to take a stand and refuse to let domestic violence become something we ignore.

How does domestic violence between parents and parental figures affect the children who witness it? This is a question often asked by Sociologists and Psychologists alike. There have been studies that prove that children who witness domestic inter-parental violence experience mental health problems, issues with gender roles, substance abuse, the committing of crimes and suicide/suicide attempts later in their lives. This paper will explore all five of these 'effects' of domestic violence on children and show that there is evidence of a clear relationship in which increasing parental violence is associated with increasing outcome risks (Fergusson & Horwood, 1998, p.8).

Kids that grow in an environment surrounded by violence also become violent. If a kid sees his dad hitting his mom he/ she will thing that it is ok to hit others. And they will imitate that behavior. Parents who punch and yelled at their children are only setting up a pattern. And violence only brings more violence. Kids should grow in an environment where they are treated with respect and with love.

     Lifestyles also play an important part in youth violence. Growing up in a divorced family as well as the way your parents raised you are major aspects that effect youth today. When children go through a divorce they experience tremendous pain and go through a lot of changes in their life.(chapter 9 impact of divorce) They experience behavioral problems, and less academic achievements. Adolescents in this stage can also experience aggression toward their parents as well as their friends and other family members due to the divorce. Every parent had there own parenting styles of raising their kids, however, some ways can lead to corrupt behavior. There are the authoritative parents whose children tend to be moody, aggressive, and have poor communication skills. Then there are the permissive and authoritative parents who are generally caring and sensitive towards their children.(chapter 9 parenting styles) Studies have shown that if you grow up in a family that shows aggression towards one another, then it is more likely that you as a young adult will be aggressive as well. However in recent studies,

The effects of intimate partner violence are attenuating and extend far beyond physical scarring. The abuse of woman and children has been researched extensively by Rachel Pain (2014, p. 536) as acts of “terrorism within the home”. If we are to compare the experience of women and children living in violent homes and the act of ‘terrorism’ itself we get a corresponding experience (Pain, 2014, p. 546). The construction of fear, the loss of identity, the ongoing distress of constantly feeling unsafe, isolated from all support networks are the surreal and ongoing daily struggles for domestic violence victims. Living in such horrific conditions has immense physical and psychological effects on those directly exposed or indirectly exposed to such violence. Through this research the links between domestic violence and ill health has been well-established. In an attempt to combat this prevalence element two of It Stops Here (NSW): a “streamlined referral pathways to support victims’ safety and support their recovery” was introduced (NSW Government, 2014, p. 18). Through this second element, there has been a strong focus on being able to better identify risk and supporting victims. From the inquest inquiry into Luke’s death, Coroner Ian Grey stated that "I find that there is no validated risk-assessment tool that can accurately predict whether a parent is likely to commit filicide." (ABC News, 2015). In an attempt to close the gap on such issues in July 2015 It Stops Here (NSW)

Parents cite children’s aggression and failure to comply with a request as the most common reasons for hitting them. Children, endowed with wonderful flexibility and ability to learn, typically adapt to punishment faster than parents can escalate it, which helps encourage a little hitting to lead to a lot of hitting (Kazdin par 2). The negative effects on children include increased aggression and non-compliance the very misbehaviors that most often inspire parents to hit in the first place as well as poor quality of parent-child relationships (Kazdin par3). The direct experience of that momentary pause in misbehavior has a powerful effect, conditioning the parent to hit again next time to achieve the jolt of fleeing success (Kazdin par

Family violence is a multifaceted problem in Canada. In the last 20 years, the majority of the provinces and territories have created legislation to address the issue (1). As of 2011, 26% of all crime in Canada was that of family violence with the majority of the victims being female (2). The economic impact in Canada is estimated to be $7.4 billion with over 80% of that cost falling to the victim (3). While the prosecution of these crimes is high, the conviction rate remains low (4). The pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury stated, “Bruises are a much neglected branch of injuries” (5). Given that 71% of the reported family violence cases are physical assaults, most of these victims will have bruises of various ages (6). In such cases,

Violence is a learned behavior. Children often experience violence for the first time in their lives in their homes or in the community. This first taste of violence may include their parents, family members or their friends. Studies have shown that children who witness violent acts, either as a victim or as a victimizer, are more likely to grow up to become involved in violence.

Kids growing in today world are full of violence. Kids bullying kids, make them unhappy depressed and to the point of taking their own life. Kids getting abuse at home or domestic violence is taking place with the parents, making the kids lash out with frustration and angry , and taking it out on innocent people. This has to stop as well. You would think kids that that grow up in that type of hostile situation the kids who grow up to be total opposite. But that not true. As a matter of fact, more kids who grow up in that type of situation would more than likely grow up in that same situation or worse. Majority of these rebellious children grew up in home with violence, witnessing violent acts, and it is almost certain that child will adapt the same tendency to engage in violent acts. Growing up in a violent home can set patterns for children … patterns that can cause them to commit violence and abuse, and continue the cycle of violence and abuse (Love Our Children

Exposure to domestic violence can impact the behavioral, social-emotional, and cognitive development of children. Children who are exposed to domestic violence tend to exhibit more aggressive behaviors with their peers, show signs of depression, and have a difficult time forming relationships (Brown & Bzostek, 2003). Cognitively, studies have shown that children exposed to domestic violence may have difficulties learning and concentrating in school, have difficulties with conflict resolution skills, and may believe in male privilege, (Brown & Bzostek, 2003). Concentration is difficult for children exposed to domestic violence because of how unsafe they may feel in their surroundings. They may be preoccupied with the violence that is

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

Throughout the course of one’s lifetime, there are countless events that shape the personality, actions and mentality of that individual. Some of these events will affect the individual in a positive way allowing great life opportunities, while other events will unfortunately affect the individual in a negative way which can lead to disorders. Among the various events that can affect a person, one of the most common occurrences that some children witness early on in their lives that deeply affect their long-term mental health is being a witness to domestic violence. Research and observations that were studied revealed that there are multiple factors that can contribute to a child witnessing domestic violence. The more categories that the

Domestic violence affects 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men (NCADV, 2015). Although the devastating effects that domestic violence has on women are well known, there is a population of domestic violence victims that we tend to overlook. These are the children of the women and men who are in domestic violence situations. Children are the invisible victims when it comes to domestic violence. There are many statistics being thrown around when it comes to the number of children who are exposed to domestic violence; they range from as little as 200,000 to even 3-18 million (Sousa et. al., 2011). A 2001 study discovered that in 75% of the cases in their study, children were present in the home during the assaults (Hutchison & Hirschel, 2001).

Family situations in which both parents are under mass amounts of stress and must work tediously to make ends meet are often inclined to have victims of child abuse in the home. Often because of troubled times economically parents reach a breaking point and enforce their anger onto his or her child, beating them physically. In many cases, parents take “teaching their child a lesson” to very high extremes, using the act of discipline to mask an act of physical child abuse. While many parents abuse under stress and frustration, some are too young or immature to handle the responsibilities of a child; not containing the capacity or patience to care for a young one often ends in abuse. As seen there many cases in which guardians cannot handle the tasks of parenthood, leading to acts of abuse. Whereas, there are also many cases in which parents suffer from disorders, increasing the probability of child abuse in a home.

When I was a child, my parents used to discipline me by hitting me but