The psychological functioning of children from backgrounds of domestic violence

Abstract

The present study examined the psychological functioning of children who came from backgrounds of domestic violence. Phase I provided a descriptive analysis of the emotional and behavioural problems, social competence, reading skills, anxiety levels, and conflict response styles of 79 children, aged 6 to 12 years, who had previously lived in domestically violent situations. Phase II compared the scores of 22 of these children with the scores of 22 children who had no history of domestic violence, and who were matched to the former group on the basis of age, sex, reading skills, and socioeconomic status. The results for Phase I indicated that between 52% and 63% of the domestic violence group showed borderline to severe levels of behaviour problems; 52% had below‐average adaptive behaviour skills; and over 43% had reading ages which were more than one year below their chronological ages. Moderately high to high levels of anxiety were evident in only 15% of children, and significantly more assertive responses and fewer aggressive responses were chosen to resolve hypothetical conflict situations. Except for the latter measure, there were no gender differences in performance. The effects of witnessing, and being directly involved in, domestic violence were also analysed. Whether or not a child witnessed parental violence did not affect any of the outcome measures for children, but direct abuse of the child by the parent affected their behavioural problems, adaptive behaviour and aggressive responses to conflict. Phase II results showed significant differences between the domestic violence and matched control samples in terms of their behaviour problems, social competence, and tendency to choose aggressive responses, but no differences in anxiety levels. The variables which were significantly related to domestic violence or control group membership were behaviour problems, of an internalising type, and aggressive conflict response tendencies. 1995 Australian Psychological Society