Systematic Literature Review of the Effects on Children Exposed to Intimate Violence

Background and Purpose: Each year, roughly 15.5 million children are exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV), which heightens children’s risk of negative physical, emotional, and social well-being compared to their non-exposed counterparts. This review aims to (1) summarize the results of existing domains of literature surrounding the consequences of children’s witnessing of IPV and (2) highlight resilience factors that increase IPV-exposed children’s chances of maintaining healthy outcomes despite IPV exposure. Although recent systematic reviews have been published, this is the most expansive review conducted to date about children’s short- and long-term well-being after IPV exposure, and what factors may encourage their resilient adaptation.

Methods: Seven electronic bibliographic databases (CINAHL, ERIC, Lexis Nexis, Medline, PsychINFO, Social Science Citation Index, and Social Work Abstracts) were searched for articles published up until December 2016, resulting in 12,579 citations after de-duplication. Two separate research assistants coded each citation for inclusion to, or exclusion from, the systematic review. Conflicting inclusion or exclusion decisions were reconciled by a third doctoral-level research assistant. Inclusion criteria were as follows: the study (1) contained participants ages birth to 18 years old (or those with more than 80% of the sample ages birth to 18); (2) measured IPV exposure compared with other children who have experienced another form of violence, polyvictimization, or who have never been exposed to IPV; and (3) used measurement tools for which full descriptions of the measurement scales and scoring procedures are available. After all coding was completed, a total of 328 citations were included in the systematic review and summarized.

Results: Included studies clustered across six primary domains of children’s behavioral (e.g., aggression, delinquency), mental health (e.g., anxiety, depression, emotional dysregulation, self-blame), cognitive (e.g., academic functioning, engagement), social (e.g., prosocial skills, bullying, teen dating violence), physical health (e.g., colds, obesity, poor sleep quality), and physiological (e.g., cortisol, respiratory sinus arrhythmia) outcomes. Across each domain, results consistently evidence the detrimental impact of children’s IPV exposure through poorer health, social, and emotional outcomes. However, a cluster of protective factors also emerge within this literature identifying child characteristics (e.g., temperament, self-esteem, coping ability, prosocial skills) and non-offending parent characteristics (e.g., mental well-being, warmth) to buffer the effects of IPV exposure on children’s negative outcomes.

Conclusions and Implications: The results of this systematic review illustrate the deleterious physical, mental, emotional, social, cognitive, and physiological consequences across development of children’s exposure to IPV. In addition to highlighting areas of future research and domains of well-being for intervention, opportunities to foster resilience in IPV-exposed children are also identified. While such children need proper identification and treatment to address negative well-being consequent of exposure to IPV, interventions might also target existing strengths of the child and his or her family (e.g., prosocial behavior, warm parenting) to best promote resilient adaptation in the face of IPV exposure.