Children Who Witness Domestic Violence

Children's charities want a change in the law to ensure that children who witness domestic abuse are better protected and supported - see Action for Children. The harmful effect on children caused by living in a family where they are exposed to abuse, violence and coercive and controlling behaviours should not be underestimated. However, local authorities already have a duty under the Children Act 1989 to protect children from significant harm, which includes harm caused by 'impairment suffered from seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another'. I believe it would be wrong to add an extra legal duty onto the workload of under-staffed and over-burdened child protection teams. There would be too many children identified as 'at risk' and too much uncertainty about their needs.

Campaigners may be concerned that local authorities do not keep strictly to the letter of the law. Very often social workers rely on 'custom and practice' within their own agency as a guide to compliance with the law, particularly if they struggle with the complexity of the legal framework underpinning their practice. As a consequence their interventions into family life may be perceived by ordinary people as arbitrary. However, these problems can only be addressed by raising standards of practice, not by changing the law.

When a social worker tries to work with a family in which there is domestic violence it is almost inevitable that the parents will be defensive and reluctant to talk openly about their difficulties. It is often the case that women are identified as victims and may therefore need practical help in leaving a violent relationship. However, the aim of the work should be to reach out to both parents as individuals, opening up discussion of any wider problems within the family, and trying not to become part of a process of apportioning blame. At the same time the social worker must consider any risks to children from physical injury, with babies being particularly vulnerable. Obviously, social workers perform a very difficult balancing act.

Domestic violence has been given a higher profile in recent years and social workers have been heavily influenced by feminists who are mainly interested in offering support to female victims. However, the profession must not be carried away by this pressure because its value base requires it to retain a commitment to men and women and developing an understanding of both people in the couple relationship. Social workers who bring a simplistic notion of trauma and victimhood may be inclined to produce assessments that are insufficiently focused on engaging men and exploring the complex, underlying dynamics of the couple relationship.

Children living in households where there is domestic violence often have emotional and behavioural problems and these will present in a range of different ways - from the timid, watchful and wary child to the hyperactive, rebellious and aggressive child. Very often the child will have conflicts of loyalty towards the parents, though sometimes a child with a strong attachment to one parent will form a negative view of the other parent from an early age. Many children instinctively want to keep the status quo and feel uncertain about change. It is even possible that the social worker's notion of making things better may seem to the child as making things worse.

To a greater or lesser extent social workers bring their own subjective feelings to their thinking about domestic abuse and, although this runs the risk of bias, it can also give them a deeper insight into family relationship problems. For example, the way we think about fatherhood will influence our thinking about children who witness domestic violence. In my social work practice I always took as much interest in supporting fathers and their children as I did in supporting mothers and their children. I assume this came from my experience of having two parents who did their best to give me a happy and secure childhood, despite their own unsatisfactory childhood experiences.

I grew up in a traditional family where my parents' relationship was fundamentally unequal but there was no physical violence. However, in recent years the nature of the family has completely changed. Fathers are adapting to changing ideas about fatherhood. Marriage is less important and for those who choose marriage there is more recognition of the possibility of it breaking down. The happy family is one that provides good-enough parenting and facilitates the child's transition into adulthood successfully. The unhappy family is one where dysfunctional patterns of relating can take many different forms but at the root of the problems are parents who do not have the capacity to function as adults in a consistent and caring way.

Social workers' personal beliefs about the family are probably central to how they interact with children and work to meet their needs. I believe we need to look more closely at the inter-personal process between the social worker and the family - so that fathers can be persuaded of their importance to families and helped to maintain relationships with their children. Their professional assumptions tend to put the focus on supporting mothers and rescuing children but these may make it difficult for some social workers to consider the possibility that a child's attachment to a father may have a particular meaning to both, despite the harm he has committed. Gill Gorell Barnes reminds us the father-child relationship is invariably affected by the mother. (See Further Reading below.) For example, single parent mothers who tend to think men are dispensable or unimportant will make it difficult for their children not to feel likewise, and their sons not to feel belittled.

Research on the effects on children of witnessing domestic violence often raises more questions than answers. Children start learning about relationships from their own experiences within their family. While it is true that children who witness acts of violence between their parents will be at greater risk of being aggressive when they are older, much will depend on the level of violence they witness. It should not be forgotten that some types of emotional and behavioural problems in children are a consequence of parental neglect or inconsistency during their early years. Unfortunately, the challenging behaviour from such children as they grow up may cause arguments within the family, putting additional pressures on the family.

Domestic violence is basically about adults in the family having angry exchanges that can become violent. The things that can set them off are often trivial. The adults may have a short fuse and may use the child to satisfy their own needs and fulfil their own unconscious wishes. From the very beginning of life a child in this situation has no choice but to accept that their needs and feelings are secondary to those of the parents. This makes it difficult for the child to discover their real self and become authentically themselves.

In recent years I have become aware of the way my own childhood experience has influenced my thinking. I have spent much of my life studying family dysfunction without fully appreciating what it was in my own childhood that made me choose to work with individuals and families in distress. It is no coincidence that I chose to be a social worker as a way of dealing with unresolved issues from my own upbringing. This has given me an lifelong interest in getting inside the psyche of the emotionally disturbed child.

I believe there is a difference between the child's feelings about witnessing verbal violence and those from being the target of it. Verbal aggression from an adult repeatedly directed at a child certainly has a damaging effect on the child's emotional development and self-esteem. On the other hand, the witnessing of verbal aggression between adults is a very different matter and some children may even be able to live with this, with minimal impairment to their personal growth and development.

While abuse should always be considered fundamentally wrong, harmful and preventable, the same cannot always be said for the adversity experienced by a child growing up in a dysfunctional family. Everyone will experience adversity at some point in their lives and there is often strength and growth to be found in it. Our responses to adversity can nurture resilience and loving relationships, while also defining our identities. As a child I suffered adversity from witnessing the stress caused by chaotic events in my parents' lives. It has only recently become clear to me that I used 'dissociation' as a necessary coping mechanism - which enabled me to switch off from their arguments and escape into ordinary childhood activities.

Domestic violence is a problem that is known to occur in all social and economic classes and is often associated with alcohol and drug abuse. The stress on a family caused by living in poverty may be an underlying reason for addictive behaviour but I believe the roots of violence associated with this are also located within the family system. This is key to understanding many of the psychological problems that children in these families display. Unfortunately, the dysfunctional patterns of relating within the family which drive abusive behaviours are very resistant to change.

One of the types of abuse included in the definition of domestic violence is 'verbal abuse'. This includes any angry exchanges within the family which escalate into derisive and scornful remarks and are felt to be deeply degrading experiences. Official guidance requires professionals to be alert to a situation where an abuser is using 'coercive and controlling behaviour' and a victim appears helpless. However, verbal abuse now seems to be an unavoidable part of life and it can be difficult to know where to draw the line. Parents are only human and know how easily family tensions can provoke them into saying things in anger that might be upsetting for children to hear. Some people consider that child protection is going too far if it requires formal intervention to protect every child from simply witnessing verbal abuse.

Many of the families that come into the orbit of Children's Services have problems associated with poverty and poor living conditions. Parents who are under stress due to circumstances outside their control may be right in thinking that the intensity of their arguments would be reduced if they had the resources of a more privileged family. A certain level of verbal aggression may be considered normal in these families and simply regarded as an inevitable aspect of family life. It is possible that, if children in such families feel reasonably secure, the everyday hassles of family life simply give them the opportunity to develop verbal skills that are useful in the outside world. However, much will depend on the level of verbal aggression within the family.

Questions are often asked about the reasons for a woman not leaving her abusive partner. When an intimate relationship that started well turns into something that causes a woman pain and suffering her self-protectiveness should make her pull away. Perhaps the awful realisation that she has put herself in this situation may trigger feelings of shame that make it difficult for her to think clearly. Fears of loneliness if she ends the relationship may cause her to doubt the truth about what is happening to her. If a sense of distrust permeates their relationship it is not surprising that many intimate relationships between couples do end abortively. However, the fantasy of a being in love is nevertheless powerful enough to make some couples stay together despite their difficulties, but the satisfactions in this may have nothing to do with real love.

Psychoanalysis has much to say about love, sex and relationships. Psychoanalytic theory can offer an understanding of the ambivalent feelings of individuals and the way perverse dynamics can sustain an unhappy couple relationship. Romantic fantasies in adult life can fill our minds with powerful longings and Freud suggests these feelings are echoes of earlier ones towards our parents that are often buried in the psyche. Our capacity as adults to establish a happy, loving relationship depends to a large extent on how well we have resolved our own ambivalent feelings towards our parents in the past.

In my training as a psychiatric social worker I was expected to look for the sources of my client’s difficulties in early experiences and relationships. This way of thinking about people has stayed with me throughout my life. In my personal life I find that relationships are more rewarding when there is a willingness to be open about our previous relationship experiences. It is in my nature to want to learn about a person's past because it gives me a better understanding of that person. I believe it is a good idea for social workers to find out as much as possible about the personal histories of the children and adults they work with.

Feminists have dismissed the theories of Freud but, in doing this, some aspects of women's development and the way that girls acquire a female identity are overlooked. An understanding of what Freud discovered about the central importance of the unconscious in adult life and the persistence of infantile desires and conflicts is no longer included in feminist thinking. There is something seriously awry if feminism now protects women from taking any responsibility for the difficulties they experience in intimate relationships. It is important to give mothers who suffer domestic violence support but this is not enough. They must also be helped to gain insight into the reasons for their difficulties in managing their ambivalent feelings towards a current partner, or former partner, and learning how to accept some responsibility for their own actions and inactions in caring for their children.

Some children may have to adapt to their difficult family situation but hopefully will find adults outside the family who are emotionally attuned to their needs and offer them the support they need. However, if these children subsequently present mental health problems, or commit offences, this should obviously be recognised as a cry for help that requires formal intervention. Social work practice is based on multi-agency working and the law as it stands provides a good framework for compulsory intervention into family life. I consider that the most constructive thing the profession can do is to continue working to raise standards of social work practice with struggling parents who are doing their best in the difficult situation they find themselves in.

Hilary Searing