“How Can I Be a Victim When I Have children?” Abused Men’s Perceptions of Their Children’s Exposure to Domestic Violence

ABSTRACT

A growing body of research finds many men are victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), but there is limited research on children’s exposure to domestic violence (CEDV) in relationships where fathers are the victims of IPV. We focus on fathers’ perceptions of CEDV in the narratives of 30 men who experienced IPV and who are from four English-speaking countries. Four main themes were identified across the countries: children as victims of abuse; effect of abuse on children; the men’s attempts to help children, and men’s own victimization in the light of CEDV. Most of the men reported that their children experienced different types of abuse, including neglect, witnessing the abuse of the father, physical and psychological abuse, and kidnapping. Effects of abuse on children varied from emotional suffering and estrangement to anger toward parents and turning against the father. Men’s attempt to intervene in the abuse of children included directly protecting children from abuse and staying in abusive relationships to protect the children. In addition, the men’s own victimization often took place in front of children. Finally, the men reported that their partners often used their children in their partners’ abuse of the men, such as through parental alienation. The implications of these findings for developing more gender-inclusive policies and programs for abused men and their children are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s exposure to domestic violence
• intimate partner violence
• male victims

Acknowledgments

We thank Drs. Elizabeth Celi, Louise Dixon, and Emily Douglas for helping with designing the study and collecting the data in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, respectively.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical standards and informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committees on human experimentation at the time the study was conducted [Clark University Institution Review Board, University of Birmingham Research Ethics Committee, University of Toronto Research Ethics Committee, and Bridgewater State University Institutional Review Board] and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study. No identifying information about the participants was included in the article.