The Effects of Domestic Violence on 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.

This article provides a good introduction for practitioners working with children who witness family violence. The article summarizes the effects domestic violence can have on children such as; aggressiveness, depression, anxiety, learning disabilities, and sleep deprivation. The author stresses the importance of proper identification and assessment of children exposed to domestic violence. There are four goals of intervention described in this article: reducing the child’s sense of isolation, helping children to understand their

Another common effect on children who witness domestic violence is that they have severe gender role issues. Clearly, children exposed to the abuse of their mothers are at risk for learning deleterious patterns of social behavior and for developing distorted expectations about the appropriate roles of men and women in the family (Brescoll & Graham-Bermann, 2000, p.2). Therefore, children exposed

Mullender et al. (2002) highlighted the fact that although most children manage to remain strong throughout the violence, their mothers were highly aware of the psychological and behavioural consequences it had had upon their children, such as being left with a trauma disorder (Chemtob and Carlson, 2004) along the lines of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (McCloskey and Walker, 2000). Whilst the children were able to display large amounts of ingenuity and adaptability, many children showed signs of being “withdrawn; fearful and anxiety; nightmares and disturbed sleep; becoming overly compliant or aggressive” Mullender et al. (2002, pg 78), with Thiara (2010) acknowledging that ‘selective mutism’ was another common effect that domestic violence had upon children. It was also observed that the children who dealt the least well were the ones where they have experienced longer term violence, where there was a “severe depletion of the mother’s physical and emotional resources” (Mullender et al., 2002, pg 94) and where the family had moved house many times.

Violence in any form can have a lasting effect on a person. Children who witness violence are permanently scarred because of what they are seeing. Children who witness family or domestic violence are affected in ways similar to children who are physically abused. Children are often unable to establish nurturing bonds with either parent and are at a greater risk for abuse and neglect if he or she lives in a violent home. Statistics show that an estimated 3.3 million children are exposed to violence against their mothers or female caretakers by family members in their home each year (Ackerman & Pickering, 1989). When a spouse, woman or male is abused, and there are

Domestic violence effects everybody in a family. Patterns of abuse from one parent to another, between both parents or directed toward a child all have a composite effect of inflicting potentially severe emotional damage upon the child. The research outlined here identifies domestic violence as a serious sociological problem and consequently provides a usable definition of domestic violence for the present study. This is followed by a discussion on the various psychological consequences of exposure to domestic violence for a developing child. This includes acknowledgement of the manner in which this exposure may damage the ability to formulate healthy social relationships later in life as well as a greater proclivity toward behavior problems, learning difficulties, substance abuse and a learned pattern of violent tendencies.

Children who witness domestic violence in their home often experience a multitude of mental and emotional difficulties. Many studies have shown childhood violence is associated with depression, incarceration and committing domestic violence themselves Buckley et al. (2007) and Katz, Settler & Gurtovenko (2016). Scholars also found that children who are both witnesses and victims both have increased levels of aggression and behavior problems Sternberg, Lamb, Guterman & Abbott (2006). Not only are children prone to aggression and behavior problems, witnessing domestic violence makes children susceptible to post traumatic stress disorder. Meltzer et al. (2009) found children who have witnessed domestic violence to be fearful and show more anxiety and depression than other children who did not experience domestic violence.

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

Children, in millions, are being raised in homes where only violence is prevailing. Not only is child abuse occurring, but also there is domestic violence which can result into serious complications as the children grow. Cases shows that a “double whammy” which signifies the child is being exposed to both types of abuse are likely to have much worse consequences (Moylan et al. 2010). Not only is this study viewing the well-being of a child, but also how their gender can affect the aftermath of this all. This study wants to support the conclusion that anxiety, depression, delinquency, commit violence crimes, and many more internalizing and externalizing behaviors increases in a child exhibiting

When faced with domestic violence these children sometimes carry on violence when they become adults or blame themselves. This article explores theories and situations that show the long term and short term effects of domestic violence. They identified 41 studies that provided relevant and adequate data for inclusion in a meta-analysis. Forty of these studies indicated that children 's exposure to domestic violence was related to emotional and behavioral problems, translating to a small overall effect (Wolfe, Crooks, Lee, McIntyre-Smith, & Jaffe, 2003).

In the United States, it is said that approximately 1.5 million women and 830,000 men experience some type of physical or sexual assault every year by intimate partners; this type of abuse is widely called domestic violence. Furthermore, more than 15 million children live in families in which domestic violence occurs in the United States. With the massive amounts of children who are exposed to domestic violence, we as a society need to understand that children who are exposed to domestic violence can be damaged not only physically but can also indirectly including the suffering from an unhealthy emotional development. Exposure of children to domestic violence can have long lasting or even permanent harm to the child. With more and more research

Family violence is a widespread problem that affects many more children than disasters, medical conditions, or accidents. Children who are exposed to family violence are linked to various problems that impeded the development process. By being exposed to violence early, traumatize children often suffer from psychological, physiological, and cognitive effect. Some children may develop a distorted logic that their parent’s actions are “normal” and it’s their fault for the trauma they have experienced. As a result, it makes it difficult for them to overcome the overwhelming feelings of pain, danger, and hopelessness. Uncared for by others, the physiological effects changes the structure of the child’s brain. This increases the aggression,

Cummings continues to talk about the long term psychological effects that domestic violence can have adolescence. “They[researchers] were curious to learn more about what stresses might be most strongly correlated with the child's diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They found two factors to be the strongest predictors: a history of sexual abuse and witnessing chronic domestic violence. In fact, exposure to domestic violence seemed to be more harmful overall” (Groves 189). This statement alone shows that exposure to domestic

In introduction this paper is going discuss, based on psychological theories, what impact and effects witnessing domestic violence can have on children. The purpose of this paper is to further an understanding on explaining its consequences based on a few psychological theories. It will begin with defining what domestic violence in order to get a clear indication on what it actually involves and further presenting a sample papers studying the question, on its impact and effect, it is suggested to have on children, in order to produce a paper with both high validity and reliability. Then moving onto presenting various psychological theories which on could considered relevant to the topic in question. By further engaging in a discussion in attempt to highlight and acknowledge several aspects regarding its consequences.

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).