Children and Domestic Violence: Emotional Competencies in Embodied and Relational Contexts

dc.contributor.authorCallaghan, J. E. M., Fellin, L. C., Alexander, J. H., Mavrou, S., & Papathanasiou, M.
dc.date.accessioned2017-12-07T18:26:03Z
dc.date.available2017-12-07T18:26:03Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.description.abstractObjective: This article engages critically with the claim, present in most psychological literature, that children who live with domestic violence are likely to be emotionally incompetent and dysregulated. We explore how children who experience domestic violence make sense of and experience their emotions. Method: There were 107 young people aged 8–18 (44 boys, 63 girls) from Greece, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom who participated in semistructured and photo elicitation based interviews. These interviews were analyzed using Interpretive Interactionism. Results: We identified 3 common themes relevant to children’s experience of emotions. In the theme Constrained Articulation – Expressing Emotions we explore how children use complex and contextually specific verbal and nonverbal ways to express embodied emotionality. The theme Emotion, Embodiment and Relationality considers how children’s emotionality is not experienced in social isolation, but in relationship with others. The third theme Catharsis, Comfort and Self-Soothing explores children’s strategies for coping with difficult emotions. Conclusions: As reflexive and agentic beings, children experience, manage, and express their emotional lives as relational and contextually located. We challenge dominant explanatory models that conceptualize children who live with domestic violence as emotionally incompetent and dysregulated. We argue that these models underestimate the complexity of children’s emotional responses by decontextualizing and individualizing them as a set of abstract social skills. (Author Abstract)en_US
dc.identifier.citationCallaghan, J. E. M., Fellin, L. C., Alexander, J. H., Mavrou, S., & Papathanasiou, M. (2017). Children and Domestic Violence: Emotional Competencies in Embodied and Relational Contexts.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/9209/3/Callaghan20179209.pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11212/3654
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherPsychology of Violenceen_US
dc.subjectchild abuseen_US
dc.subjectfamily violenceen_US
dc.subjectchild witness to interpersonal violenceen_US
dc.subjectexposure to violenceen_US
dc.subjectpsychological effectsen_US
dc.subjectcopingen_US
dc.subjectresilienceen_US
dc.subjectresearchen_US
dc.subjectInternational Resourcesen_US
dc.titleChildren and Domestic Violence: Emotional Competencies in Embodied and Relational Contextsen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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