Introduction
Few topics are as much debated as domestic violence directed at children. Despite the evident harm, such behavior persists and continues to affect society. Research shows that it is a global phenomenon not specific to any particular culture (Wali et al., 2020). Even though the reasons for the prevalence of domestic violence are not agreed on, the fact that familial abuse is detrimental to children’s well-being raises no doubts among scientists. However, the effects of domestic violence are not fully understood by the public. Despite the overall perception that children suffer long-term consequences, most people do not realize how damaging domestic violence can be. Exploration of behavioral, physical, emotional, social, and cognitive implications of domestic violence will provide insight into the effects abuse has on children in each of these dimensions.
Emotional Effects
Emotions play an important role in ensuring psychological and physical well-being. Each person has emotional needs that have to be fulfilled on a consistent basis. Similar to how eating prevents malnourishment and drinking prevents dehydration, emotional needs also have to be satisfied in order to prevent neuroses and psychological breakdowns. Emotional self-regulation is an essential life skill which people acquire throughout their lives. The starting point for the acquisition of this skill is the environment in which a child grows.
Before children learn to regulate emotions themselves, they rely on their caregivers. It is especially important in the first years of life when the frontal lobe is rapidly growing (Mueller & Tronick, 2019). A family with healthy relationships provides for the emotional needs of children. Whenever a child feels threatened, their parents ensure their need to feel secure. If a child wants connection, their parents satisfy them via a loving attitude. When a child desires to be left alone, the family allows them to meet their need for autonomy. Once a child wants to feel empowered, parents allow them to satisfy their need for esteem. Children who grow up in such environments learn to react adequately to stressors and emotional disturbances in later life.
However, when familial relationships are toxic and violent, the domestic environment no longer contributes to children’s healthy emotional development. Instead of feeling secure, they experience anxiety, turning into paranoia. The lack of connection intensifies children’s sense of being lonely and abandoned. When families constantly violate the personal space of children, their deprivation of autonomy results in codependence. The inability to meet their esteem needs leads to the emergence of the feeling of unworthiness. Children growing up in such conditions fail to adequately regulate their emotional state and transfer their family-related toxicity to other spheres of life.
Emotional reactions are essential in determining the subsequent behavioral response. Unable to properly fulfill their emotional needs, children overcompensate and delve deeper into their emotional negativity. For instance, children may apprehend disclosing the truth about the domestic setting to the outside world because of the fear of consequences (Lloyd, 2018). Witnessing parental conflicts creates feelings of uneasiness and anxiety. Even when children are not the direct target of violence or do not witness it physically, they still respond emotionally. The inability to prevent parental conflicts creates feelings of guilt, shame, and fear, which may ultimately result in learned helplessness (Rahayu & Hendriani, 2019). This emotional state will invariably affect how children react to external stimuli, causing them to feel powerless and desperate.
Arguably, the most infamous emotional consequence of domestic violence is the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) syndrome. It emerges as an unconscious response of the child’s brain to the anxiety produced by domestic abuse. Most commonly, it is expressed via three forms: “reliving the event, avoidance of situations that recall the event, and hypervigilance” (Paul, 2019, p. 2). PTSD is a long-term mental health issue, which obfuscates emotional regulation. Combined with other mental disorders, it signifies how much a child’s psyche is damaged in dysfunctional families.
Behavioral Effects
The manner of children’s responses is directly related to the emotions they experience. Children who grow in healthy domestic environments adjust to the accepted norms of behavior quickly and with minimal effort. If the family nurtures a sense of security, the child will be open to new relationships and ideas. Children who experience loving relationships with their caregivers have healthy friendships and avoid toxic communication. When parents respect children’s need for autonomy, they do not become dependent on other people. Finally, a child with healthy self-esteem will positively and adequately assess their strengths and weaknesses. However, in order for such behavioral responses to originate, a healthy domestic environment is essential.
When children do not learn to regulate their emotions properly, their behaviors deviate from social norms. Children who lack a sense of security because of exposure to domestic violence have difficulty trusting and opening themselves to people. When home conflicts prevent children from feeling connection, they overcompensate by attempting to communicate with people to whom they may not appeal or who use them to affirm their own insecurities. The lack of autonomy forces children to have aggressive reactions to any criticism or guidance. Finally, insufficient esteem makes children overly criticize themselves or pursue unhealthy activities that would make them feel empowered. These outcomes are only several possible variations that children living in violent domestic settings may experience.
There are multiple other behaviors, which do not stem from the failure to meet a certain need. For example, it is not uncommon for children who live with abusive caregivers to have eating problems and sleep disturbances (Riedl et al., 2019). Both of these activities may seem as purely physiological needs that exist regardless of the familial context. However, both eating and sleeping fulfill human psychological needs as well. Food consumption is a complex process that is connected with many hormones that are responsible for mood. Eating sugar-rich food may become a way for children to escape the painful reality and numb their anxiety. The same purpose can also become accomplished with sleeping. Naturally, sleeping and eating disorders can also manifest in the lack of desire to eat or inability to sleep, which further accentuates how vulnerable children are to aggressive domestic settings.
Finally, the most important behavior that children who experience domestic violence are likely to engage in is not informing the outside world about familial conditions. Partially, it is caused by the fear of consequences of disclosure from abusers. Another explanation is the strength of cultural taboo that scorns reporting as inappropriate behavior. In any case, children may stay silent for extended periods of time. Costello and Greenwald (2022) argue that it might take years for victims of domestic violence to disclose, while most do not do it. When children feel powerless to actively prevent anxiety and conflict, they respond with passive-aggressive behavior. The implication is that this behavioral pattern transfers to other spheres of later life, negatively impacting their future relationships, including work, family, and social environment.
Social Effects
Social norms are shaped by the most common and acceptable behaviors. The more people adopt a certain behavioral pattern, the more likely it is to become a norm. Moral values guide people to act in a noble and forgiving manner. If children learn the importance of moral principles, decency, and respectful conflict resolution, society will be peaceful and lawful. As the first stage of personal socialization, families play an essential role in cultivating behaviors that dictate how children will interact with society and other people.
However, when children are exposed to domestic violence as primary targets or bystanders, they learn a different lesson. Instead of viewing conflicts and violence as unacceptable measures, they start seeing them as appropriate behaviors. When children interact with society, they have the same behavioral expectations they learned in families. If society is generally respectful and conflict-averse, the behavior of victims of domestic violence will become deviant. If society is already composed of people who frequently encounter abuse and view violence as a norm, children from abusive families will further reinforce the toxic social values. After all, social norms are formed by the most common and not the most moral behaviors.
Children who experience domestic violence are at higher risk of perpetuating the cycle of abuse. Early years are important in the development of the personality because children rely on their caregivers to provide models of behavior. Social learning theory posits that people are unconsciously driven to recreate behavioral models set by their parents (Riedl et al., 2019). Even though children themselves may not like the idea of violence, they may still unknowingly perceive it as a stress-coping mechanism. As a result, this behavioral pattern is repeated in future relationships, thus constituting a self-perpetuating cycle of familial abuse. The subsequent social impact is the child’s contribution to crime statistics.
However, the use of violence as a coping mechanism is not a universal response. Many children choose to withdraw and minimize social interactions. The resulting isolation may prevent them from being subjected to violence, but it also increases the sense of loneliness. The fear of being vulnerable prevents children from making connections or reciprocating positive feelings when other people attempt to open up to them. Social isolation pushes such children to engage in excessive and harmful behaviors, such as binge-playing video games, alcohol drinking, and even substance abuse (Eckhardt et al., 2022). These behaviors serve to fulfill psychological needs, which are not met due to isolation.
Finally, the most concerning social consequence of violence is children’s inability to find a working coping mechanism. When neither aggression nor withdrawal are seen as the potential solutions, children may become desperate. The fear of consequences and public disclosure prevents many from seeking professional help. Unable to find a working solution, children may develop suicidal ideations, which may result in suicide. Instead of finding a safe environment at home, children face violence and abuse. Domestic violence is dangerous precisely because it renders the supposedly safe environment as threatening.
Cognitive Effects
Cognitive effects take the most effort to ascertain because they are both underresearched and are not as evident. It might be challenging for a teacher to spot the signs of domestic violence in the school progress of a pupil. Yet, domestic violence definitely impacts a child’s understanding and learning mechanisms. One study was made specifically to explore the association between childhood violence and educational outcomes (Fry et al., 2018). Victims of violence were more likely to have low grades, engage in truancy and drop out of school. Although such behaviors do not always signify learning disorders, there are instances when abuse damages children’s ability to reason.
Human reasoning is directly related to the functioning of the brain. As Mueller and Tronick (2019) argue, “research shows that exposure to adversity over the first 5 years of life can have lasting effects on brain development” (p. 3). The reason for this observation lies in the importance of context for brain development. As much as successful brain development requires a secure relationship between the caregiver and the child, its absence is detrimental to normal brain development.
Cognitive functions revolve around two primary abilities – to reason and to memorize. When parental neglect is coupled with domestic violence, both abilities diminish. Mueller and Tronick reference research in which the IQ of more than a thousand twins was studied. Its most important finding was that “the severity and number of violent episodes exposed to at home were associated with a greater decrease in IQ” (Mueller & Tronick, 2019, p. 5). In essence, exposure to domestic violence makes the child susceptible to learning disorders.
An especially intruding observation of victims of domestic violence is that different types of abuse have various cognitive consequences. A systematic study by Su et al. (2019) has found that “physical abuse was only associated with visual episodic memory but not verbal or working memory” (p. 288). Meanwhile, sexual abuse affected non-verbal reasoning and proceeding speed, and emotional abuse lead to lower literacy/verbal comprehension and executive function. Even neglect, which is not a form of violence itself, has been shown to negatively impact reasoning. As a result, domestic violence is an extremely detrimental phenomenon that causes cognitive development issues.
The subsequent implication is that children who experience abuse at home will have more difficulty studying and learning than those who have healthy families. The inability to concentrate and memorize information will slow down the child’s school progress. In the long-term perspective, children may not be able to receive education altogether. As a result, many children are deprived of future prospects precisely due to exposure to domestic violence and corresponding brain damage.
Physical Effects
The most evident expression of domestic violence is physical abuse directed at children. Domestic violence can take the form of direct physical actions against children. The variety of physical violence can encompass beating, burning, subjecting to discomforting feelings, sexual actions, and other activities that cause physical harm. The effects of such abuse are relatively easy to ascertain since it usually leaves an evident trace on the body. The subsequent treatment of such symptoms is also relatively evident.
However, there are also physical effects, which stem from non-physical abuse. The reason for this connection lies in excess of stress. Stress response is an inherently physical process, which is determined by the functioning of the nervous and endocrine systems. Conflicts and unsafe situations, in general, cause high levels of cortisol. As stress response is also learned in childhood, “a secure relationship buffers the infant’s hormonal stress response and therefore, protects the developing brain from harmful effects of stress hormones” (Mueller & Tronick, 2019, p. 3). Domestic violence amplifies the production of stress hormones and makes children overly agitated and highly sensitive.
Another effect of exposure to violence is weaker health resistance to illnesses. Studies indicate that children who were victimized at home also had a higher rate of gastrointestinal, respiratory, and skin diseases, as well as musculoskeletal disorders (Riedl et al., 2019). It should be noted that the onset of illnesses themselves is not caused by violence specifically. However, it does exacerbate the symptoms and protract the time necessary for treatment. A possible explanation is that children who live in a violent domestic setting experience chronic stress. As much as their mental well-being is challenged, their physical ability to recuperate is negatively affected as well.
Conclusion
Altogether, it should be evident that domestic violence is a complex phenomenon, which has emotional, behavioral, social, cognitive, and physical consequences for children. The domestic environment plays a vital role in the physiological and psychological development of children. As much as healthy familial relationships nurture physical and mental health, abuse prevents children from developing appropriately. Violence causes a disproportionate production of stress hormones in children. Unable to regulate arousal on their own, children respond with overcompensating strategies that lead to social deviations. Meanwhile, hormonal dysfunction causes physical changes, which impact children’s cognitive development and make them susceptible to illnesses. Overall, the harm caused by domestic violence is so great that it impacts both children individually and society as a whole.
References
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