“My father often used to hit my mother at night. My mother didn’t have peace at night upon coming back home after a whole day’s hard work. Whenever there’s a fight in our home, I feel like committing suicide.” Nasima (pseudonym), a 14-year-old adolescent girl, said while talking about her experience of witnessing domestic violence since her early childhood. Her father was not willing to pay for household or educational expenses and her parents fought over this. Whenever her mother asked her father to pay for the expenses she was beaten. Witnessing the violence on her mother, Nasima considered herself responsible for her mother’s suffering.
Like Nasima, many other children from Hazaribagh, Gojmohal -- one of the lower income areas of Dhaka which was once a part of the booming tannery industry of the country -- are victims and witnesses of domestic violence. The children, alongside adult victims of domestic abuse, shared their rarely-told personal experiences with researchers as part of a study conducted by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) in partnership with the Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA) program, a global consortium dedicated to finding solutions to minimize the risks faced by working children across Bangladesh and Nepal.
Domestic violence has a significant impact on children’s mental health. Children’s physical proximity to the incidents of violence, continuously witnessing abuse of the mother, and emotional closeness to the mother make them extremely vulnerable.
BIGD research also shows that children become victims of violence along with the mother whenever they try to prevent their father from abusing their mother, as they are often beaten and verbally abused by the father. A 14-year-old girl said, “When my father beats my mother, I try to stop him. But then he beats me too. He swears at me. That’s why I don’t go to stop them. My brother and sister get scared when they fight and they sometimes cry when they get too scared.”
Children who both witness and experience abuse from violent parents feel scared, ashamed, and unprotected. Moreover, those growing up seeing violence every day become silent observers. Some of the female adolescents experienced depression and withdrawal. Mena (pseudonym), a 14-year-old, said that she stopped interacting with her father. She also doesn't want to talk about the violence with her mother. It was very painful for her to see her parents fight with each other. Mena said, “I would protest against my father but then he would use ugly swear words against me. So, I stopped talking to him. Now, I don’t even feel like talking to him and so I don’t. I would feel very bad when he used to beat my mother. He would beat her and we couldn’t say or do anything about it.”
Domestic violence in the households of BIGD’s research area often becomes public knowledge, as many families in low-income settlements live in close proximity within the same building or compound. The father of one of the adolescents took a loan for gambling and her parents fought over this when the money lender went to their house and threatened them. The parents’ fight became public gossip with neighbours discussing it, which made her feel ashamed. She said “People laugh at us. They talk about these things. They laugh at us because my parents fight when someone comes to our door and threatens us.” Children feel humiliated when the privacy of their family cannot be maintained and their neighbours show disrespect towards their parents.
Studies show that children who have experienced domestic violence learn that aggression is an acceptable problem-solving strategy. Children also lose the courage to protest against the injustice around them. The harmful impacts of domestic violence on children are both physical and physiological. Family disorganization, physical abuse, and mental trauma are also the most common consequences along with depression, conflict, and low family bonding.
To minimize the risks faced by the children and for their well-being, women of the research area should have protection from all kinds of violence. Communities and families both need to be aware about immediate and long-term harmful effects of domestic violence on the children. Communities should take collective action to make parents, especially the fathers, aware of how violence against their family can affect their children. Preventive and protective services by the state and community need to be strengthened.
Taslima Aktar is a Research Associate, BIGD, BRACU.