Citation

Katz E. Child. Soc. 2013; 29(1): 69-79.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, National Children's Bureau of the United Kingdom, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/chso.12023

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Although domestic violence research increasingly recognizes children's agency, this awareness has not extended to our understanding of children's relationships with their abused mothers. Findings suggesting that some children actively support their mother, and encourage her to leave the perpetrator, have been consistently under-discussed. This article argues that the model of parent-child relationships used by most domestic violence research sees children as passive and contributes to mother-blaming discourses. Analyzing key quantitative and qualitative research, I suggest that a more sophisticated model of parent-child relationships is needed to understand how children's agency affects them, their mothers and the domestic violence situation.

Language: en