Domestic violence in the home has a profound effect on children who are exposed to it. Even if the children are not abused themselves, being helpless witnesses to the abuse of a parent is just as traumatizing to them as direct abuse. The effects of living in a violent home may create problems for a child throughout his or her life.

• An estimated 3.3 million children aged 3 to 17 years may witness domestic abuse of a parent every year in the United States.¹
  
  
• In a national survey of over 6,000 American families, 50% of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children.²
  
  
• Children living in homes where there is domestic violence against a parent are 15 times more likely to be physically abused or neglected themselves than the average for children in non-violent homes.³
  
  
• A comparison of delinquent and nondelinquent youth found that a history of family violence or abuse is the most significant difference between the former and latter groups.⁴
  
  
• Men who have witnessed their parents' domestic violence are three times more likely to abuse their own partners than children of non-violent parents, with the sons of the most violent parents being 1000 times more likely to become batterers.⁵
  
  
• Children who witness violence at home display emotional and behavioral disturbances as diverse as withdrawal, low self-esteem, nightmares, self-blame, and aggression against peers, family members and property.⁶

When a woman is in a battering relationship, her effectiveness as a parent can be severely affected. The batterer's verbal or physical abuse undermines the mother's authority and causes her to lose confidence. She may become depressed or begin abusing substances. As she becomes more isolated, a battered mother loses outside sources of support. If she has no control over money or transportation, she may be unable to meet the children's basic needs for medical care, clothing, or food. The batterer may deliberately manipulate the children to act against their mother. Or, he may be so outraged by the children's misbehavior that the mother becomes overly strict and harsh in disciplining them, in order to protect them from the batterer's anger. Eventually, a battered mother may end up abusing or neglecting her own children as a consequence of her own trauma.

Children depend on their parents to provide a safe, stable and predictable environment. When their parents are involved in a battering relationship, attention is taken away from the children's needs and focused on the violence. The entire family becomes isolated. Mother and children are occupied with mollifying the batterer and trying to keep him from getting angry. The home devolves into chaos, without appropriate role models, limits, and models for behavior. The mother may become emotionally dependent on her own children, inverting the parent-child relationship and placing a burden on the children to be their mother's support.

Children in such a situation learn that they don't really matter. They learn that anger means losing control, and that men control women through violence. They develop conflicted feelings of love and hate for both parents, and live in constant fear that the family will break up, that their mother will be badly hurt or leave them, or that they themselves could be hurt by the batterer. The consequences of children living with violence have social effects, as well as individual ones. Children from violent homes may display criminal behavior, or repeat the cycle of violence by growing up to abuse their own partners and children.

Chart of Effects of Violence by Age Group

NOTES:
¹ American Psychological Association. Violence and the Family. 1996.
² Straus, M.A. & Gelles, R.J. (eds). Physical Violence in American Families. New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers, 1990.
³ Stacy, W. and Shope, A. The Family Secret. Boston, MA. Beacon Press, 1993.
⁴ Miller, G. "Violence By and Against America's Children," Journal of Juvenile Justice Digest, XVII(12) p. 6. 1989.
⁵ Straus, M.A. & Gelles, R.J. & Steinmetz, S. Behind Closed Doors. Doubleday, Anchor. 1980.
⁶ Peled, Inat, Jaffe, Peter G, & Edleson, Jeffrey L. (eds). Ending the Cycle of Violence: Community Responses to Children of Battered Women. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995.