Imaging fathers: supporting children who have experienced domestic violence

Objectives Children who experience domestic violence report complex and challenging relationships with their perpetrating parents. Academic literature and professional practice provides little guidance on supporting children who experience domestic violence in working through the complexities of their relationships with the perpetrating parent. This paper is based on interviews with children where the main perpetrator of domestic violence was their father. It paper explores children’s often ambiguous relationships with their father, and suggests strategies to support children in working through these relationships. Method The project ‘Understanding Agency and Resistance Strategies’ involved interviews with 107 (aged 8-18) children who had experienced domestic violence. Based on these interviews, a group based intervention was developed and piloted to support children. These group based interventions were evaluated using routine outcome measures and interviews with 21 children who had participated in the groups. This approach yielded a rich data set of interviews and visual imagery. This paper provides an overview of the relational work conducted in these intervention groups, and presents an analysis of children’s talk about their relationships with their perpetrating parent. Interviews were analysed using Denzin’s Interpretive Interactionism. Results Major themes emerging from the interviews included children’s ambivalence about their relationship with their perpetrator father, and highlighted the identity implications of this for the children themselves. In particular, children’s gender identity, their sense of their future relationships and their understanding of their potential future parenting experiences are all complexified by the ambivalent feelings, memories and experiences that they have of their fathers. Conclusions The paper concludes that there is a need to make space in practice for children to work through the complexity of their experiences with their fathers, but that this must be managed without risking collusion with perpetrators.