Understanding young children’s experiences growing up with domestic violence from a children’s rights perspective

This chapter adopts a children’s rights framework to examine young children’s experiences growing up with domestic violence. The first section of the chapter examines how exposure to domestic violence affects young children’s physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional functioning. The second section presents children’s own accounts of growing up in homes characterised by domestic violence. Taken together, these two bodies of research demonstrate unequivocally that exposure to domestic violence adversely impacts young children. The final section of the chapter presents practice and policy recommendations for better supporting children growing up with domestic violence.