DV 101 - Domestic Violence and the Impact on Children

"Children worry that their mothers will get seriously hurt or their fathers will go to jail. These thought weigh most heavily on a child's mind during school hours, when the child is not at home. This constant anxiety does not allow them to pay attention to their studies. Children who live with domestic violence may also have a difficult time relating to their peers. In some cases where the battered mother is isolated, socializing has not been modeled at home. It is not uncommon for the children to feel guilty for having fun. Many children do not want to leave their battered mother alone. If intervention does not occur, these children's feelings of anxiety, accountability, guilt, grief and embarrassment will begin to take command of their lives."

-From Understanding Children of Domestic Violence by Karen McGuckin

• When children are killed during a domestic dispute, 90% are under the age of 10; 56% are under the age of two.
  
  
  Florida Governor's Task Force on Domestic and Sexual Violence,
  Florida Mortality Review Project, 1997
  
  
• Each year, an estimated 3.3 million children are exposed to violence by family members against their mothers or female caretakers.
  
  
  American Psychological Association, Violence and the Family:
  Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family, 1996
  
  
• In homes where partner abuse occurs, children are 1,500 times more likely to be abused.
  
  
  Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Family
  Violence: Interventions for the Justice System, 1993
  
  
• Many parents minimize or delay the presence of children while their mothers are being assaulted. However, interviews with children of battered women reveal that they have seen, heard and can describe accounts of violent behavior that their mothers or fathers never realized they had witnessed.
  
  
  Jaffe, Wolfe & Wilson, Children of Battered Women, 1990
  
  
• In a national survey of more that 2,000 American families, approximately 50 percent of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children.
  
  
  Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles, Physical Violence in American Families, 1990
  
  
• Children's lives are frequently disrupted by moves to escape domestic violence. They lose considerable school time; flee home without books, money or changes of clothing; and live in the family care when shelters are unavailable.
  
  
  Maria Roy, Children in the Crossfire, 1988
  
  
• Of children who witness their mothers being abused by their fathers, 40 percent suffer anxiety, 48 percent suffer depression, 53 percent act out with their parents and 60 percent act out with siblings.
  
  
  Pflout, Schopler & Henley, Forgotten Victims of Family Violence, Social Work, July 1982
  
  

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