Difficult but Close Relationships: Children’s Perspectives on Relationships With Their Mothers in the Context of Domestic Violence

Abstract

This article reports findings from a participative and qualitative study conducted with children who had experienced domestic violence, focusing on their perspectives on their relationships with their mothers. Three focus groups and 46 individual interviews were conducted with children to gather their experiences. The research findings demonstrate that women's and children's victimizations are inextricably linked, and that domestic violence affects mother-child relationships. They also show that, despite the challenges and difficulties, children generally consider their mothers as very significant individuals in their lives, and have close relationships with them. The findings also reveal a dynamic of mutual protectiveness.

Coercive Control, Domestic Violence, and a Five-Factor Framework: Five Factors That Influence Closeness, Distance, and Strain in Mother–Child Relationships

“…There is a growing body of international research into how DV affects relationships between female victims/survivors and their children. This includes studies from Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Nepal, the United Kingdom, and the United States (Buchanan, 2018;Chanmugam, 2014;Goldblatt, Buchbinder, & Cohen, 2014;Humphreys et al, 2006;Katz, 2015;Kong & Hooper, 2018;Lapierre, 2010aLapierre, , 2010bLapierre et al, 2018;McManus et al, 2013;Vergara, Comas, Gautam, & Koirala, 2015). Perpetrators'/fathers' undermining of mother-child relationships has been identified as a major cause of harm to motherchild relationships (Bancroft et al, 2012;Humphreys et al, 2006;Lapierre, 2010b;Radford & Hester, 2006).…”

Young Children’s Narrations of Relational Recovery: a School-Based Group for Children Who Have Experienced Domestic Violence

“…Children's direct participation in research is generally accepted as a way of facilitating better representation of an otherwise marginalised group (Harcourt and Einarsdottir 2011). The implementation of rights-based research has meant that researchers have been able to document children's coexisting agency and vulnerability when they have experienced DV, as children describe themselves (Åkerlund 2017;Åkerlund and Sandberg 2017;Callaghan et al 2015;Lapierre et al 2017;Øverlien, 2017;Swanston et al 2014). These findings significantly challenge what has been described as a discourse of 'damage' (Callaghan et al 2015), by offering a relational and child centred picture of how children make sense of and cope with violence.…”

Effects of Domestic Violence Against Women on Their Children

“…The victimization of mothers and children is closely linked, with the victimization affecting the relationships between mothers and children (Lapierre et al 2018). The relationship between the mother's symptom and the children's symptoms indicates that the care actions of these mothers are impaired by the IPV that they suffered due to them being less available (Boeckel et al 2017).…”