Domestic Violence, Children's Agency and Mother–Child Relationships: Towards a More Advanced Model

Abstract

Although domestic violence research increasingly recognises 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. Analysing 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.