Children in a Climate of Violence

“EACH year, as many as 6.5 million children are harmed by parents or other family members. . . . Thousands of children each year are so seriously battered by their parents as to require medical treatment. Another 700,000 are deprived of food, clothing and shelter, and between 60,000 and 100,000 are sexually abused.”—“U.S. News & World Report,” January 15, 1979.

Child abuse is truly a heartrending problem. In some cases, child victims are simply weak, available objects on which parents vent frustrations, jealousy or anger. Yet in many other cases it is a matter of parents carrying to a harmful extreme something that children do need—discipline. The wise and loving Originator of family life tells us: “Chastise your son while there exists hope.” “The rod and reproof are what give wisdom; but a boy let on the loose will be causing his mother shame.”—Prov. 19:18; 29:15.

In studying the problem of child abuse, psychologist D. J. Madden found that “children can feel oppressed by too much discipline or abandoned by too much leniency.” He explains: “Children expect parents to make decisions. When they don’t, the child questions whether he can depend on his parents. And if the child takes over, he can become the disciplinarian.”

“Awake!” of July 22, 1976, dealt extensively with child abuse, including what parents can do to make sure that, though giving their children needed discipline, they do not become child-batterers.

However, let us here give attention to how children are affected by living in a climate of husband/wife violence. Could it be that children who see such abuse learn important lessons from it and thus, when they grow up, are more motivated to avoid being a wife- or husband-batterer?

If a child sees mother or father being abused, that picture is stored away. Later, when he or she gets angry as an adult, it is easy to revert back to the pattern seen in youth. Simply stated, violence begets violence. Consider the example of John, a 26-year-old husband who admitted to counselors that he beat his wife repeatedly during their seven-year marriage. When he was a lad, family violence was common. His father drank and often attacked John’s mother, sometimes with a knife. Remembering his father, John sobbed: “When I got in the middle, he would throw me against the wall. I said this would never happen in my house. Funny, huh?” Also, recall the case of Sarah’s husband and son related on page 5.

Yes, research shows that children brought up in a climate of home violence often become violent themselves. From a negative standpoint this bears out the Biblical truism: “Train up a boy according to the way for him; even when he grows old he will not turn aside from it.”—Prov. 22:6.

Writing in “The Canadian” of April 1, 1978, Dr. Elie Cass states: “Where there is an unhappy, violent home life, a child will grow up to use the model of violence learned as a family member to solve problems when he or she becomes a parent.” The founder of a refuge for battered women in London, England, says: “If we look at the histories of these men, they were either beaten as children or actually watched it . . . so the violence goes from one generation to the next. It becomes the norm.”

Even if seeing home violence in childhood does not result in one’s later becoming an abuser of wife, husband or child, it takes a tragic toll. A North Carolina study of “children who are not physically abused but who live in families [with] violent parents . . . found chronic depression among 37 percent of the children. . . . Another 40 percent suffered anxiety, while 25 percent had undergone therapy for psychological disorders.”

Clearly, then, families with children have an additional reason for positive action to solve the problem of violence or prevent it at home. If the parents ignore this need and their children are forced to live in a climate of home violence, it is very possible that the youths will be emotionally damaged and may well carry this terrible scourge into the next generation.