Subjecting children to domestic violence
Subjecting children to domestic violence
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Right now, a woman is being beaten black and blue and would not have a clue about what to do. Such domestic violence happens every 12 seconds to an estimated one out of four women. Much to other people’s puzzlement, the abuse is often cyclical and recurrent.
Curiously, domestic violence is the leading cause of women’s injury in the US, beating accidents, muggings and rapes combined. Battering is even more likely when there are children in the family. It usually starts during pregnancy and is responsible for half the separations that happen yearly.
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But why the batterer does not display violent demeanor during the early stages of the relationship only reinforces the mystery. It normally occurs after the victim is already emotionally involved and only in brief episodes. This should explain why some battered women don’t look battered at all. But what starts with a little slapping, kicking and shaking eventually leads to severe punching, choking and beating.
A trauma for children
Children who witness domestic violence tend to have higher levels of behavioral and emotional problems, or so says a research conducted by the Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Center in Australia. According to the study, some children feel responsible for the violence, while others think they are helping their mother by appearing to cope well. Boys are more likely to display their emotions while girls tend to keep their feelings inside. Pre-adolescents are more prone to externalize their negative feelings while adolescents are more at risk of resorting to delinquency. A lot of children escape without a trace of physical injury but are inflicted with emotional scars that are more difficult to heal in the long run.
In families where husbands resort to abuse, children reportedly witness about two-thirds of the incidents. About half of the children in such families have themselves become victims of the violence, including sexual or emotional abuse. This leads to emotional and behavioral disturbance such as withdrawal, low self-esteem, nightmares and aggression against friends and family members.
Like fathers, like sons...
Children who survive broken homes seem to have a better chance of making their lives better for themselves. However, the opposite is true, most especially among males.
According to a national survey involving 6,000 American families, about half of the men who were found to have repeatedly attacked their wives also abused their children. Eighty-one percent of men batterers had fathers who attacked their mothers. The worse part of it is that 60 percent of the boys who experience violence in the home become abusers themselves, while 50 percent of the girls become victims. This means that those who experienced domestic violence are more prone to get involved in abusive relationships themselves as they tend to imitate the behavior of their parents.
Children endure emotional pain if they are themselves beaten or if they see members of the family being attacked. The same goes when they are compelled to defend a family member if they are not ignored altogether. The ultimate grief happens when children lose their parents through separation or even death.
Maternal care and responsibility
To hear it from the Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Center, battered women have what it takes to save the day. To get started, they should explain the situation to their children in a language they can understand. From there, they could go on to tell them that the violence is not their own making. The children should also be allowed to speak out their minds about the condition they’re facing and find them someone outside the family who can relate to them. It is likewise necessary to let them know that there are families with similar experiences before talking them into a safety plan which they can follow.
"Firstly, we need to understand and accept that witnessing domestic violence harms children," the center says. "We need to place the responsibility for the violence with the offending parent, and support the abused parent in order to improve her capacity to protect her children. Most importantly, children who witness domestic violence need to know they are not forgotten."
In the long run, though mothers must take the initiative to protect their children from further psychological and physical damage, battery within the home is not an accepted social behavior, and in a way, should be treated as a crime against the codes of family ethics. Taking this into consideration, it is not only up to the mothers but also to those who know any cases of domestic violence that such incidents must be reported to the proper authorities. Laws have been made to protect anyone involved in domestic violence from further psychological breakdown. Children, whose minds can be bent towards the destruction of a family can become social delinquents--batterers or psychologically depressive--if not pulled out immediately from what can be deemed as hell at home.
In the dark: the Why of domestic violence Misconceptions about Violence Against Women Psychological Abuse and the Woman as Victim
Reprinted courtesy of http://www.doctorgeorgette.comSubjecting children to domestic violence
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