In this section, we discuss the literature relevant to FV, its impact on children and the emerging service needs for children. The section also presents the impact of systemic oppression on racialized immigrant children who experience FV.

Family Violence

The Canadian Divorce Act^[1]describes FV as

any conduct, whether or not the conduct constitutes a criminal offence by a family member towards another family member that is violent or threatening or that constitutes a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour, or that causes that other family member to fear for their own safety or for that of another person—and in the case of a child, the direct or indirect exposure to such conduct—and includes physical abuse, . . . sexual abuse, threats to kill or cause bodily harm to any person, harassment, including stalking, the failure to provide the necessaries of life, psychological abuse, financial abuse, threats to kill or harm an animal or damage property and the killing or harming of an animal or the damaging of property. (Government of Canada, 2022c, para 1)

Direct and Indirect Violence

Early medical and social science literature categorized child maltreatment as neglect, physical violence, and sexual abuse (Malinosky-Rummell & Hansen, 1993). Furthermore, psychological abuse and maltreatment were seen as common factors in all forms of abuse and recognized as negatively impacting child outcomes (Trocmé & Wolfe, 2001). This understanding of child maltreatment has evolved. In Canada, child abuse currently encompasses physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, emotional harm (psychological abuse) and exposure to FV (Gardner et al., 2019; Mehta et al., 2021).

Scholars have identified the negative impact of direct and indirect exposure to FV on children (Kimber et al., 2018; Luthar et al., 2021; McTavish et al., 2016). Indirect violence refers to children’s awareness of a parent’s abuse of another parent, caregiver, or family member. It also includes being aware of a parent’s violence by seeing or hearing violent interactions or evidence of abuse and hearing stories about it. Direct violence means being a victim of violence. However, in this book, we move away from the bifurcation of indirect and direct exposure to violence and exercise the concept as a child’s direct and indirect experience of violence. This idea was advanced by Callaghan et al. (2018) and Overlien (2017) to challenge conceptions of children as passive witnesses or recipients of violence between/from adults. Furthermore, exposure to systemic factors such as poverty, racial discrimination, bullying, community violence and separation from immigrant parents due to immigration policies have also been understood as traumatic events that can negatively impact a child’s life (Portwood et al., 2021).

Impact of Family Violence on Children

Literature from the early 1980s and 1990s focused on the negative impact of FV on children. The literature identified diverse emotional outcomes (withdrawal, anxiety and depression) and problematic behavioural outcomes (conduct disorders, aggression and delinquency) in children impacted by FV (Franzese et al., 2017; Gardner et al., 2019; United Nations, 2020). Gardiner et al. (2019) argue that witnessing FV as a child results in suicide ideation, body-esteem issues and adjustment problems during adolescence. They also assert that such children are likely to engage in bullying but are also victims of bullying at school. Jewkes and Morrell (2017) and Kumari (2020) add that such negative impact often extends into adulthood.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) lays out how post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can impact a person (American Psychological Association, 2022). The prevalence of PTSD varies across demographic groups; Davison et al. (2021) found a strong correlation between PTSD and racialized immigrants (i.e., refugees, uprooted people and economic migrants) compared to white immigrants and Canadian-born individuals. These outcomes persisted despite controlling for social, health, nutritional and economic variables.

Scholars also assert that parents who experience PTSD and trauma are more likely to inflict violence on their children (Cross et al., 2018), which in turn increases the chance of the child developing PTSD (Cross et al., 2018; Schubert, 2022; Woolgar et al., 2022). In their most recent edition of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), the World Health Organization (2019) distinguishes between PTSD and complex PTSD (CPTSD). In addition to PTSD criteria, CPTSD includes criteria related to experiencing distance in relationships, affect dysregulation and a negative self-concept (Longo et al., 2021; Vang et al., 2021). CPTSD is a psychiatric designation established to address the symptoms associated with experiencing prolonged or repetitive traumatic events (Greenblatt-Kimron et al., 2022; WHO, 2019), such as being exposed to FV and abuse in childhood (Gilbar & Cloitre, 2019; Vang et al., 2021). CPTSD is more debilitating than PTSD, increasing the likelihood of a major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder (Karatzias et al., 2019; Longo et al., 2021). However, Ford (2020) has challenged the construct validity of CPTSD, recommending further research to distinguish the differences between PTSD and CPTSD symptoms.

Experiencing physical or sexual abuse as a child is correlated with an increased likelihood of revictimization in adulthood in the form of dating violence (Mazarello et al., 2022; Yan & Karatzias, 2020). However, the process of violence transmission remains unclear; Haselschwerdt et al. (2018) found that the transmission of violence changes as developmental stages advance. Female adult participants who experienced FV as children all experienced abusive relationships in high school, and these adolescent experiences influenced how they entered, managed and exited romantic relationships during college. However, over time, respondents became selective about their romantic relationships and actively chose partners who did not share traits with their abusive fathers.

There are intergenerational outcomes for children exposed to FV, including becoming a perpetrator or victim of FV in adulthood (Lünnemann et al., 2019; Maji, 2018). There is also evidence of gendered differences in the intergenerational consequences of FV. Forke et al. (2018) found that a male child is likelier to learn and repeat a man’s violence against a woman, while a female child is more likely to feel victimized. However, when a child witnesses a woman perpetrating violence solely or together with a man, the outcome is the same for both male and female children.

Family violence also strains the relationship between fathers and children (Ghani, 2018; Lamb et al., 2018), although children are willing to repair their relationship with their fathers if their fathers recognize how their violent behaviour impacted the children (Lamb et al., 2018). Additionally, Kong and Goldberg (2022) found evidence that sibling relationships are negatively impacted when they experience FV, resulting in distant relationships between them in adulthood.

Family violence negatively affects children’s academic performance. Children exposed to FV are likely to experience basic and advanced literacy challenges, hyperactivity, inattention, and difficulty understanding others, affecting their academic performance (Orr et al., 2021). This study also found that children exposed to FV are likely to move schools at least once during the school year. Children exposed to FV are also likely to be victims and perpetrators of bullying at school (Nagaraj et al., 2019). However, scholars have also argued that the impact of FV on education differs depending on the family’s cultural background.

Recognizing the adverse outcomes of FV is crucial for expanding our knowledge on the issue and identifying services for children, but there are important critiques that need to be considered. Overlien (2017) argues that previous studies on FV position the child as a passive bystander of abuse, thus stripping the child of agency. Recent literature has found that children are directly impacted when one parent inflicts violence on another and that children develop strategies to cope with and mediate the impact of this (Arai et al., 2021; Callaghan et al., 2018; Overlien, 2017). Overlien (2017) further asserts that research that focuses on a child’s negative symptoms and behaviour may lead to the assumption that children who do not demonstrate such adverse outcomes or appear to be successful are not impacted by their exposure to FV and, thus, do not require service support. In this manner, Overlien (2017) has disrupted the notion of support based on adverse outcomes.

Poverty and its Impact on Family Violence

Literature has shown a bi-directional relationship between FV and food insecurity (Laurenzi et al., 2020; Haque et al., 2020). Field et al. (2018) and Lacey et al. (2020) found that individuals living in poverty are more likely to report sexual, emotional and physical abuse, and Bennett et al. (2020) argue that such individuals are more likely to inflict abuse on and neglect their children. Mehta et al. (2021) show that intersectional factors such as a person’s demographic background influence the relationships between food insecurity, poverty and FV. Many asylum seekers and refugees have been traumatized before migrating to their new country. This pre-existing trauma, compounded by racism, prejudice, and health, social, educational and financial challenges, puts such individuals at a higher risk of physical and emotional abuse and neglect. In turn, the children in such families are highly vulnerable to emotional and physical neglect and abuse as their parents try to manage the impact of their own trauma and acculturative stress (Mehta et al., 2021).

Additionally, inadequate financial and social resources put poorer immigrant families at an increased risk of FV for extended periods (Niess-May, 2019), and studies have demonstrated that immigrants face greater economic hurdles. According to Crea-Aresenio et al. (2022) immigrants encounter challenges in securing employment, which has long-term financial implications such as wage-earning loss (Zhang & Banerjee, 2021). Women, recent immigrants and racialized individuals in the Canadian labour market are more likely to experience a persistent disadvantage (Lightman & Good Gingrich, 2018). And in Ontario, first-generation immigrants experience barriers to employment, including social and promotional integration, due to cultural judgment and discrimination (Ertorer et al., 2022).

Service Needs

In Canada, 30% of children and youth who are victims of police reported violent crime are also victims of FV (Conroy, 2019) i. e. among child and youth victims, approximately 30% were victims of family violence perpetrated by a parent, a sibling, a spouse or another type of family member. Trauma-informed mental health services (Kulkarni, 2019; Levenson, 2017), school-based programs (Howard, 2019; Martin et al., 2017) and child welfare services (Bunting et al., 2019; Dougherty et al., 2022) are the predominant services available for children experiencing FV. Trauma-informed care requires that the service provider recognizes the importance of their client’s trauma and decreases re-traumatization (Racine et al., 2020). However, trauma-informed care has been criticized because of a lack of evidence of its effectiveness with youth and in school communities (Maynard et al., 2019).

Offering programs in school to raise awareness about abuse can be helpful for students (Mehta et al., 2021). However, for schools to promote knowledge of FV effectively, teachers must be prepared with information and resources to guide children who approach them for guidance (Lloyd, 2018). Lloyd (2018) also has advocated for homework clubs, as students experiencing FV might not have access to space for homework.

Dougherty et al. (2022) found that many students with behavioural problems in school often experience FV and trauma. Offering teachers behavioural support services before making an expulsion decision has been found to decrease the student’s problematic conduct and hyperactivity and increase their prosocial skills. As FV and poverty are correlated (Haque et al., 2020; Laurenzi et al., 2020), establishing school breakfast clubs (Lloyd, 2018) and paid family leave for working parents (Bullinger, 2019) are also helpful services for reducing financial stress and unemployment leading to FV.

Child welfare services and FV services play an integral role in supporting survivors of FV. However, tension exists between these agencies because of their different philosophical approaches to supporting service users (O’Leary et al., 2018). Agencies that focus on gender-based violence typically use feminist approaches to support service users, focusing primarily on the mother. In contrast, child welfare services focus primarily on the child and call on the child’s parents for support (O’Leary et al., 2018). This inter-agency tension impacts their information sharing and hence, the level of safety for children and mothers impacted by FV.

The number of mental-health clinicians who are trained in trauma-informed and evidence-based interventions targeted at children is low (Dougherty et al., 2022). Dougherty et al. (2022), studying American children, advocate for a government-funded service to address this problem that offers free training to mental-health clinicians about how to diagnose and effectively support children exposed to trauma.

The literature has also identified the importance of supporting children and mothers together. Kulkarni (2019) highlights the necessity of these services as survivors frequently request counselling services for their entire family, especially women who continue to interact with their partner or the co-parent of their child. Sullivan (2021) emphasizes the importance of support workers informing mothers of all available resources related to FV so that mothers can make informed decisions for themselves and their children. The relationship between mother and child can become stained if they leave abusive family settings. In such an event, Thiara and Humphreys (2017) encourage ongoing support for both mothers and children.

As children are agentive in their own right (Overlien, 2017) and cope with FV differently, they require individualized services that meet their specific needs (Noble-Carr et al., 2020). Callaghan et al. (2018) encourage service providers to listen to the child and create a therapeutic atmosphere for the child to develop their coping skills in the face of FV.

The Compounded Impact of Systemic/Structural Violence

Galtung (1990) defined systemic/structural violence as “violence [that] is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances” (p. 171). These structures are violent because they result in a greater risk of harm, illness, injury, and death to a class or group of people (Rylko-Bauer & Farmer, 2017).

Structural and systemic violence such as poverty, food and clothing insecurity, the presence of poor neighbourhoods, high levels of violence, racial discrimination, and racist culturally insensitive services compounds victims’ trauma as additional trauma (Rylko-Bauer & Farmer, 2017). Community workers and scholars working with racialized families challenge mainstream feminist approaches to FV, which primarily address the needs of white, middle-class women and misidentify race-based systemic violence and their impact on marginalized women and their families as well as their specific needs (George et al., 2022; Kulkarni, 2019). Scholars and community workers working with South Asian women recommend a critical analysis of uninterrogated assumptions in research, such as attributing FV in racialized immigrant families to their culture (George & Rashidi, 2014; Razack, 2003; Volpp, 2011). Culturalization scripts about immigrant norms and traditions construct frozen, one-dimensional portrayals of immigrant families leading to the perpetuation of harmful stereotyping by professionals and the erasure of survivors’ experiences (Volpp, 2002). Using Crenshaw’s (1991) concept of intersectionality and interlocking oppression, Kulkarni (2019), Razack (2003), Thobani (2000) and Volpp (2002, 2011) identify a need to reconceptualize FV in immigrant families who experience multiple, interlocking forms of violence. Such analyses are crucial for working effectively with racialized families and dismantling policies and practices that create unnecessary suffering from unnecessary complications.