ABSTRACT
Children play important roles both directly and indirectly at various points in battered women’s life cycle. For the women in this study, motherhood was an important goal. Arguments about pregnancy and/or disciplining children frequently occasioned violent eruptions; and concern for children was sometimes pivotal in moving a woman toward separation from a violent mate. Children of homeless battered women were forced to remain out of school, and had to adjust to living with strangers in a shelter, or were caught in intergenerational conflicts concerning child rearing when living with grandparents. This chapter focuses on the specific effects violence had on the children of these women and related issues concerning women’s work’ and child rearing as a single parent.
