The Problem

When a mother is abused:

• her children see it, hear it, and sense it

• her children feel confusion, stress, and fear

• her children might feel guilty that they can't protect her, or they might feel responsible for the family break-up

• her children (particularly sons) are more likely to repeat the destructive relationship patterns they saw in their early lives

• her children might also be physically abused, or they might be neglected while the mother attempts to deal with her own trauma

Studies Reveal

• Children of battered women show their distress in a range of physical and emotional problems.

• Children from violent homes get sick more often and generally have more health problems than children non-violent homes; these include headaches, ulcers, abdominal complaints and bedwetting. If the children are themselves abuse, their health problems are even greater.

• Psychological and emotional problems are more frequent in children of abused women. 

• Preschoolers particularly show below-average self-concept and less empathy for others, while school-aged boys are likely to be more aggressive and show more behavioral problems than girls of battered mothers and children form non-violent homes. 

• Depression, anxiety, fears, eating and sleep disorders, regressive behaviors and guilt are common in children of battered women.

• Children of abused women are at high risk of being abused themselves

• The rate of child abuse is from six to fifteen times higher in families where the mother is abused compared to families where the mother is not abused.

• Of women coming to shelters, more than half report that their children are also physically, emotionally, and sometimes sexually abused; the child abuser is two to three times more likely to be the woman's abuser than the battered woman herself.

• Many battered women report that their abusers either threaten or attack the children as a way to control and hurt the mothers even more.

• Studies of abused children in the general population reveal that nearly half of them have mothers who are also abused, making wife abused the single strongest identifiable risk factor for child abuse.

• Children (particularly boys) of battered woman are at a great risk of repeating the patters they saw as children when they become adults:

  • While the common wisdom holds that abused women are just repeating the victimization they saw their mothers suffer, comparative studies actually show that battered women are lonely slightly more likely than non-battered women to have come from homes where they or their mothers were abused.

  • In contrast, abusers are six times more likely to have seen their fathers beating their mothers than non-abusers (one study showed that 45% of the abusers had seen their mothers abused as compared to 7.5% of non-abusers). 

  • Almost 82% of those boys witnessing spouse abuse were also abused themselves, thus confirming a strong relationship between spouse abuse and child abuse.

  • Our culture already encourages boys to act aggressively, to show and take power physically, to see girls as weak and easy prey; the culture encourages girls to act submissively, and to accept the domination of the male as the norm. These values reinforce boys’ early experience of a violent home, increasing the likelihood that they will become abusers. 

  • Societal values encourage girls, no matter what their background of abuse, to accept how their husbands of boyfriends treat them, to expect that boys/men will use physical means to maintain control of their surroundings and the people in them.