Children and Domestic Violence

1 Children who witness domestic violence
The effects of domestic violence are not confined to its victims. Apart from the fact that children may try to intervene to protect adult victims (thus putting themselves in danger), children who witness domestic violence are more likely than others to develop psychological and social problems including stress-related disorders such as PTSD. They may be fearful and angry, and exhibit (both as children and as adults) internalized and externalized behavioral problems including withdrawal, hostility and substance dependency. Their relationships may also reflect violence learned or seen at home.
2 Violence against children
The reported instances of violence against children in the form of acts and omissions which endanger their physical or emotional health, well-being and development have increased over the last few decades. The primary forms of violence and abuse against children are neglect, exploitation and physical, sexual or emotional abuse, and they can have devastating consequences for victims both immediately and in the long-term.
Violence against children is completely illegal and schools, doctors and social workers have a duty to report suspicions of child abuse to the relevant legal authorities.
There appears to be no single, definitive cause of abusive behaviour against children. At one end of the scale, the number of officially recorded child murders has steadily risen over the years and 60% of those charged with these murders are the parents of the murdered children. According to John Keane, in many of these cases, it is clear that both the victims and the perpetrators are trapped in high tension zones 'where the conflict-ridden logics of the household (intimacy, sexual desire, identity formation, personal habits, marriage, money, housework and childcare) interact with, reinforce and often contradict virtually the same list of conflict-ridden logics of the labour market (with its additional special stresses and strains of employment, unemployment and underemployment) and its neighbouring criss-crossing social relations with the wider civil society'.
3 What Europeans think of domestic violence
The Teen Abuse Survey of Great Britain 2005 conducted by the NSPCC revealed that a third of teenage girls experienced or witnessed domestic violence at home but more than half of them did not consider this --- hitting, screaming and shouting --- to be domestic violence. 43% of teenagers thought that it was acceptable for a boyfriend to become aggressive and over 40% of all girls said that they would consider giving a boy a second chance if he hit them.
The general awareness about domestic violence in Europe appears to be high though; only 4% of Europeans said that they had never heard of domestic violence against women in the 1999 Eurobarometer Survey conducted by the Commission. The survey also divulged that 62% of Europeans considered domestic violence against women to be 'unacceptable in all circumstances and always punishable by law', 32% considered it 'unacceptable in all circumstances but not always punishable by law', 2% said that it was 'acceptable in certain circumstances' and, thankfully, only 0.7% believed that it was 'acceptable in all circumstances'.
This post is an extract from an essay was written for the POROS Project.