“Witness” to violence? Psychological discourses of children in situations of domestic violence

1. “Witness” to violence? Psychological discourses of children in situations of domestic violence Jane Callaghan, Judith Sixsmith, Jo Bilotta, Sarah Armstrong Hallam University of Northampton

2. Responding to the way that children are represented in professional and academic literature about domestic abuse • Passive, voiceless • Project aim: • To explore young people’s capacity for resistance, agency and resilience in situations of domestic abuse

3. What does the literature say? • All academic literature published between 2002 and 2013 focused on children, mental health, resilience and domestic abuse • 183 articles were included in the review

4. Exposure and victimhood • The term ‘exposure’ 85% of the articles included in the review. (wmatrix – f=453 99.9th percentile, p<0.01) • The term ‘witness’ is used in 67% of the articles (wmatrix – f=224, p<0.01) • 77% of the articles described children as ‘victims’ (77%) or as ‘victimised’ (wmatrix f=392, p<0.01

5. What about agency, resistance, empowerment? • “surviv*” appears in contrast in only 23 times – and rarely in a positive or empowering sentence construction • Empower appears 10 times – and typically refers to the empowerment of women, not of children and young people • Resilience appears 64 times • Resist, resisting, resistant, resisted – appears 50 times in the articles. As a social concept it is largely contained in articles about women resisting DV for the sake of their children. • Use of the term ‘agency’ as referring to active agentic action (not as in ‘social work agencies’) could be traced in just 17 times.

6. Witnessing • In the UK, ‘witness to domestic violence’ was included as a child protection issue as an amendment to the 1997 Children Act. • A common term to refer to children in situations of domestic abuse • Connotations: • Passively watching • Impacted, but not directly ‘involved’ • What impact does this construction have on the way we talk about children, and what are the implications for professional and other intervention in young people’s lives? • Capacity for agency and resistance?

7. Exposed • “According to one estimate, more than 10 million children living in the United States are exposed to violence between their parents each year (Straus, 1992), with more than 34,000 children in England and Wales passing through domestic violence refuges annually (Shankleman, Brooks, & Webb,2000).” (Rivett, Howarth and Harold, 2006)

8. Exposure and Experience • “To determine whether infants have a traumatic response to intimate partner violence (male violence toward their female partner; IPV) experienced by their mothers, two questions were explored: (1) Is the number of infant trauma symptoms related to the infant’s temperament and the mother’s mental health? (2) Does severity of violence moderate those relationships?” (Bogat et al, 2003)

9. Intergenerational cycle of violence • 26 papers drew significantly on some notion of an intergenerational cycle of violence, or a ‘transmission model of violence’ • Repeating the ‘intergenerational cycle of violence’ – doomed to repeat

10. “Maltreated children are more prone to rejection by normative peers as a function of deficits in interpersonal functioning and thus are more likely to gravitate to an aggressive, deviant peer group. As adolescents and emerging adults, they select their romantic partners from these groups of peers who are deficient in terms of interpersonal skills (Feiring & Furman, 2000) and experience conflictual romantic relationships (Downey & Feldman, 1996). Maltreatment may therefore be one pathway to involvement in conflictual, abusive romantic relationships (Wolfe, Wekerle, Reitzel-Jaffe, & Lefebvre, 1998).” • “We expected that childhood maltreatment, power assertive punishment, and exposure to violence between parents would each increase the risk for adult partner violence by placing youths at risk for disruptive behavior disorder by adolescence and for substance abuse disorderby the early 20s.” Ehrensaft et al 2009, pp 741 and 748

11. Gender and the intergenerational cycle • Varying gendered construction re the impact of intergenerational violence • Boys learn to be violent; girls learn to be victims

12. The sins of the father... And the mother • The intergenerational cycle of violence is positioned as inevitably damaging to children. • But the mediator of the child’s response to the violence is most frequently framed, within this literature, as being related to the mother’s response to the violence, and her pre-relational psychological functioning

13. “A significantly large number of children are exposed to maternal addiction and mental illness, as well as interpersonal violence... Children witness between 68% and 87% of all domestic violence incidents, and are aware of violence toward their mothers 90% of the time.” From Finkelstein et al, 2005: “Building Resilience in Children of Mothers Who Have Co-occurring Disorders and Histories of Violence” • Focus of the article shifts from the impact of DA, to the impact of poor mothering. • Children are ‘exposed’ not just to the violence (which is clearly framed here as implicitly male violence against a ‘mother’), but to a damaged mother. • Thus this literature suggests the problem isn’t so much the violence itself as it is the deficiencies of the mother... ????

14. Our wmatrix analysis revealed that “mother(s)” was the fourth most frequently appearing term in the dataset, appearing 607 times with a relative frequency significance of p<0.0001. (More common than ‘domestic’!) • In contrast, ‘father(s)’ appeared just 17 times.

15. Mother blaming • Children’s wellbeing is seen as the mother’s responsibility • “Caregivers’ vulnerabilities of various kinds have been linked to compromised parenting: caregivers’ own history of maltreatment, anxiety and depression … substance abuse … aggression and lack of social support ….and poor physical health” (Wekerle, 2006, p. 429) • “When infants witness severe IPV, they appear to experience an additional stressor; in this case, the distress of their mothers. …When the adult’s responses are not well-regulated (this enhances) the child’s responses.” (Bogat, 2003)

16. Damaged children • 84 papers described psychopathological consequences of ‘exposure’ to violence • PTSD, depression, anxiety, personality disorder, attachment issues • 5 papers focused on damage to neural system • 6 articles outlined other poor outcomes like educational difficulties, criminality

17. Victims • “A general problem with this literature, however, is that most such studies on individual types of victimization have failed to obtain complete victimization profiles…. Children who experience one kind of victimization are at greater risk of experiencing other forms of victimization.” (Finkelhor et al, 2006, p.7) • “Poly-victims” (Finkelhor et al, 2006, p.19)

18. Risky • “Externalities in the Classroom: How Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Affect Everyone's Kids” (Carroll and Hoekstra, 2009)

19. Resilience • 25 articles dealt with the notion of ‘resilience’ • “Research has pointed to various protective factors operating for children in adverse circumstances, such as intelligence, parental attachment, external interests, coping skills, peer relations and temperament.” (Finkelhoret al, 2006) • Social cognition – how children attribute violence

20. How does this translate into practice? • These constructions of the child have implications for professional and social discourses around children in situations of DV • It has implications too for how children are able to position themselves – their capacity to construct a self-identity as agentic, resistant, capable...

21. Exploring children’s agency in domestic abuse • In this project we want to explore children’s capacity to think and act – to cope, to be creative, to manage, to resist • Children are not passive witnesses

22. Formulaic and rehearsed accounts • Children interviewed to date present coherent but rehearsed accounts Int: What does it feel like when you’re with your mum George: Nice Int: Nice? George: Yes Int: Tell me a little bit more about nice? George: It’s just nice. Paul: You need to put it another way! Int: How do you feel about yourself when you’re with you mum? George: Happy

23. Escaping • Various forms of escapism • Bethany – drawing • Paul tall trees – a space to think • George and Paul – xbox • Escape • Alternate social world • A space in which they are in control of the dangerous things around them • George and Paul - adrenalin (“Death Hill”)

24. Gestures of defiance Int: Did you used to send her texts? Paul: Yeah Int: were you allowed to do that. Paul: Yeah. … Sometimes. Cause like sometimes I sended a text. Like upstairs. I missed my mum! I used to say in the text “I hate my life”. Cause I never got to see my mum. Int: And you found ways like that of telling her that you missed her.

25. Humour • To deflect, distract and to express Int: Yes because you’ve had quite a time of it since you came back Paul: Yes. I have. ((sings)) I’ve had the time of my life….”

26. Us vs dad George: We get to do swimming, fun things, that’s fun Paul: But only with our mum, never with our dad • Dichotomous relational construction – father rendered relatively unspeakable

27. Boys ‘smuggled him in’ in photos of his dogs, in xbox games that reflected his lifestyle Paul: I like shooting guns George: We have five guns at home Paul: bb guns Int You’re used to having guns around George: Boys like guns

28. Complex relationships with the past • Managing complex and competing images of father Int: Who do you least like in your family? Paul: My dad. Because I love my dogs a lot,and I love nearly everybody in my family and stuff. It’s just my dad I don’t like. Int: What is it about your dad you find difficult? Paul: Well all the time he’s shouting and stealing and stuff. And it’s hard work.

29. Paul: I’d just get angry, and I’d just cope Int: How did you cope? George: You just did it. You didn’t cope. You just did it so we could get by. Int: so you did things just to get by George: Yeah Int: What sorts of things? George: Porsche bonnets, Porsche spoilers, Porsche doors, Porsche wheels, Porsche tyres. George: When we were out stealing… But Paul is well strong. You know the front of the Porsche, where it has, you know, on the bonnet? We could carry that all by ourselves

30. Disclosure and closure George: Sometimes you don’t want to say stuff but you need to. Int: Does it help to talk or… ? George: It helps because then… you can leave the past behind and you don’t get in trouble and stuff. Int: Do you want to leave the past behind? George: Yeah. (…) Int: Why? George: Because you can start fresh

31. Paradoxical resilience • Many of these young people’s expressions of resilience are not ‘prosocial’ or particularly ‘nice’ George: Yeah, I sent a letter to ((my social worker)) saying I don’t want to see my dad, and my dad found out and he got really angry and we never spoke to each other for a long time. And then ((my support worker)) got some people in, and I didn’t speak a lot, my brother did, because I got my brother to speak, I told him what to say. Because I like, if I tell him and he says it, then if he’s doing all the speaking and it doesn’t get back to dad, then he’ll get hmm hmm, and I wouldn’t. • In our drive for closure and happy endings we risk obscuring their expressions of resistance and resilience

32. Envisioning alternative futures George: But if I had to plan my life, I’d have education, then a house, then a car, and then children. Int: And when you grow up, what kind of parent do you think you’ll be to your children? George: Really nice. Yeah. Cause what happens, most of the dads are nice. So it keeps going on nicely.

33. Conclusions • Overwhelmingly the imagery and talk associated with children and domestic violence positions them as passive recipients of damage, and as consequently pathologised. • Need for alternative ways of talking about children and young people that enables positioning as agentic, resistant and resilient • Make space for young people to own their experiences • Create space for positive framing of young people in situations of violence - a future for young people to populate