Discuss the Impact of Exposure to Domestic Violence on Children’s Attachment Relationships

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201023.020How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Domestic violence, attachment relationships, caregivers, temperament, fatherhood parenting style, gender difference

Abstract

There is a major impact on children who have to experience the terrifying nature of domestic violence. These are only, of course, negative results and alters the affects children’s attachment relationships. “Domestic violence can be defined as the systematic pattern of abusive behaviors in a relationship that are used to gain and/or maintain control and power over another person. (Domestic Abuse Project, 2016)” The concept of attachment relationship refers to a caregiver-child relationship that can develop into different styles. John Bowlby (1979) suggests that attachment is a strong and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space. The impact of domestic violence and abuse vary among all individuals. This essay will be aiming to investigate how children develop their attachment relationships differently and what the mediated factors are that affect different types of attachment styles being formed. This essay will be divided into four paragraphs. The first part of this essay will be discussing how domestic violence has an impact on children before birth and how interactions between children’s temperaments and caregivers’ sensitivities can form advantageous attachment relationships. Followed by the second part; discussing the impact of DVA on children’s attachment patterns during the infancy period. In addition, discussing how caregivers who were the victim of DVA may not be capable of providing consistent care and creating a safe environment for infants. The next paragraph will introduce three different parenting styles that are proposed by Bancroft et al (2012) and how they change children’s attachment behaviours after witnessing a caregiver being abusive to their respective caregiver. The final part of this essay examines how boys and girls tend to act differently when they were exposed to DVA during the adolescent period. In addition, it will also discuss other adversities and risks children may face when living with DVA and how they affect children’s attachment behaviours. Lastly, this essay will stress the detrimental effect domestic violence has on children and how it affects a child’s holistic development and the long term impact.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Boyu Hou
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/11/06
TI  - Discuss the Impact of Exposure to Domestic Violence on Children’s Attachment Relationships
BT  - Proceedings of the 2020 5th International Conference on Modern Management and Education Technology (MMET 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 110
EP  - 114
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201023.020
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201023.020
ID  - Hou2020
ER  -