ABSTRACT
In this chapter I explore children's experience of domestic violence in rural Pakistani society. The chapter is based on my doctoral studies and was the first qualitative study conducted in a patriarchal rural Pakistani village. The goals of the research study were to examine the cultural and structural factors that supported the perpetration of domestic violence in the home. Extended observational work and open-ended unstructured interviews with the female participants in the village provided the data for this study. The participant narratives described their childhood, adolescence, early adulthood and older adulthood years, including their exposure to domestic violence. The detailed conversations with the villagers revealed that they did not recognise exposure to domestic violence at home as having a negative impact on children; nor did they consider these children as victims of domestic violence. The data indicated that the children in the village were expected to learn their gender roles and display culturally desirable behaviours. I concluded that this type of “cultural conditioning” runs the risk of undermining and masking the devastating psychological and emotional repercussions of early exposure to domestic violence.
