This article begins to build knowledge of how non-violent coercive controlling behaviours can be central to children"s experiences of domestic violence. It considers how children can be harmed by, and resist, coercive controlling tactics perpetrated by their father/father-figure against their mother. Already, we know much about how women/mothers experience non-physical forms of domestic violence, including psychological/emotional/verbal and financial abuse, isolation and monitoring of their activities. However, this knowledge has not yet reached most research on children and domestic violence, which tends to focus on children"s exposure to physical violence. In this qualitative study, 30 participants from the UK, 15 mothers and 15 of their children (most aged 10-14) who had separated from domestic violence perpetrators, participated in semi-structured interviews. All participants were living in the community. Using the Framework approach to thematically analyse the data, findings indicated that perpetrators"/fathers" coercive control often prevented children from spending time with their mothers and grandparents, visiting other children"s houses and engaging in extracurricular activities. These non-violent behaviours from perpetrators/fathers placed children in isolated, disempowering and constrained worlds which could hamper children"s resilience and development and contribute to emotional/behavioural problems. Implications for practice and the need to empower children in these circumstances are discussed. KEY PRACTITIONER MESSAGES: Children experiencing domestic violence may be affected by more than the physical violence perpetrated by one parent against the other.  Children may be harmed by non-physical abusive behaviours inherent to coercive control-based domestic violence, including continual monitoring, isolation and verbal/emotional/psychological and financial abuses.  Responsibility for the impacts on children of coercive control-based domestic violence should be placed with the perpetrator (usually fathers/ father-figures) and not with the victimised parent (usually mothers).

Although domestic violence research increasingly recognises children's agency, this awareness has not extended to our understanding of children's relationships with their abused mothers. Findings suggesting that some children actively support their mother, and encourage her to leave the perpetrator, have been consistently under-discussed. This article argues that the model of parent–child relationships used by most domestic violence research sees children as passive and contributes to mother-blaming discourses. Analysing key quantitative and qualitative research, I suggest that a more sophisticated model of parent–child relationships is needed to understand how children's agency affects them, their mothers and the domestic violence situation

This article shows how domestic violence perpetrators can use coercive control against their children after their ex-partner has separated from them. Coercive control can include violence, threats, intimidation, stalking, monitoring, emotional abuse and manipulation, interwoven with periods of seemingly 'caring' and 'indulgent' behaviour as part of the overall abuse. Crucially, what this article provides is knowledge, hitherto largely missing, about how children and young people can experience coercive control post-separation. The article draws on two separate data sets, one from the UK and one from Finland, which together comprise qualitative interviews with 29 children who had coercive control perpetrating fathers/father-figures. The data sets were separately thematically analysed, then combined using a qualitative interpretative meta-synthesis. This produced three themes regarding children's experiences: (1) dangerous fathering that frightened children and made them feel unsafe; (2) 'admirable' fathering, where fathers/father-figures appeared as 'caring', 'concerned', 'indulgent' and/or 'vulnerablevictims'; and (3) omnipresent fathering that continually constrained children's lives. Dangerous and 'admirable' fathering describe the behaviours of coercive controlperpetrating fathers/father-figures, while omnipresent fathering occurred in children as a fearful mental and emotional state. Perpetrators could also direct performances of 'admirable' fathering at professionals and communities in ways that obscured their coercive control. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Some mother–child relationships become more strained and distant than others in domestic violence contexts, but the processes influencing this are little understood. Qualitative interviews with 15 mothers and 15 children were held to explore their experiences. Findings suggested that five interlinked factors influenced levels of closeness, distance, and strain in mother–child relationships: (1) perpetrator’s/father’s behavior toward children, (2) perpetrator’s/father’s use of domestic violence, (3) perpetrator’s/father’s undermining of mother–child relationship, (4) mother’s ability to emotionally connect to children, and (5) children’s views of mother and perpetrator/father. These findings have global significance for services and practitioners who work with domestic violence–experienced mothers and children and may help to tailor responses more effectively to mothers’ and children’s needs.

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