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- Title
Child Custody Decisions in Families Experiencing Woman Abuse.
- Authors
Saunders, Daniel G.
- Abstract
This article reviews the scientific literature comparing the risk that battered women and men who batter will physically abuse their children. Most studies of domestic violence that also explore child abuse have serious methodological shortcomings. Most use non-random samples, do not adequately define abuse, and obtain reports of abuse from only one parent. In domestic violence studies, about half the men who batter are reported to abuse their children. Emotional abuse is increasingly being recognized for its negative effects. Subjecting children to the victimization of their mothers is a severe form of psychological maltreatment. Despite the parents' attempts to shield the children from adult violence, most children witness some violence against their mothers and are likely to at least hear the violence. Hiding in their bedrooms out of fear, the children may hear repeated threats of injury, verbal assaults on their mother's character, objects hurled across the room, suicide attempts, beatings, and threats to kill. Abuse as opposed to ordinary punishment was defined as violence more severe than pushing, grabbing, spanking, slapping, or throwing. Interviews were with either husbands or wives, and respondents reported on their own and their partners' behavior.
- Subjects
CHILD psychology; ABUSED women; DOMESTIC violence; DOMESTIC relations; HEADS of households; CHILD abuse
- Publication
Social Work, 1994, Vol 39, Issue 1, p51
- ISSN
0037-8046
- Publication type
Article