Identifying Predictors for Children Witnessing Intimate Partner Violence

• Published in: Journal of family violence 2014-08, Vol.29 (6), p.675-679
• Main Authors: Nouer, Simonne S., Mackey, SeèTrail N., Tipton, Nathan G., Miller, Ashley C., Connor, Pamela D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Child Abuse; Children; Children & youth; Clinical Psychology; Couples; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Decision Making; Domestic violence; Family; Family violence; Females; Health education; Help Seeking Behavior; Law and Psychology; Male-female relationships; Marital satisfaction; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Mother and child; Mothers; Partner Abuse; Prevention; Psychological factors; Psychologically abused children; Psychotherapy and Counseling; Quality of Life Research; Research on Children’s Exposure to IPV; Surveys; Victims; Violence; Women's health
• ISSN: 0885-7482; 1573-2851
• DOI: 10.1007/s10896-014-9619-0

Research has shown that intimate partner violence (IPV) prevalence and severity is higher and IPV duration is longer among couples that have children. Women frequently report that their children are the reason why they stay, leave, or return to an IPV relationship. Our study used results from a two-wave telephone survey to determine what IPV-associated factors were significant predictors of respondents’ children witnessing IPV, as well as estimating prevalence of children’s exposure to violence. We found that an increase in respondents’ age was significantly associated with increased odds of a child being exposed to violence. We also found that children witnessing violence were almost twice as likely to have mothers who reported leaving abusers. We hypothesize that increasing age corresponds to improved confidence in help-seeking behaviors. Our findings represent an important first step for future research on understanding how children influence IPV victims’ decision-making in seeking out service providers for help.