ABSTRACT

Violence can become an unthinking response that clicks in automatically in a father, as a way of taking and maintaining power. The chapter considers the effect of violence on children’s own emotional range and potential depressive disorders. Violence offers confusing role model of authority for children, in which person who commits violent acts can also be perceived to be the person in charge, demonstrating to a child that force can be used to get way between people in intimate and dependent relationships. Violence arises in multiple different contexts in the socio-political world, in which violent actions and thoughts are carried out and replayed at different levels. Some of the effects of civil wars on family life might include ideological beliefs imposed through physical violence. Enlarging the systemic frame to include patterns between couples and children derived from the childhood of one or both parents opens up multiple perspectives on violent behaviour beyond the couple alone and different specificities emerge.