TheLoop21.com

By: Raechal Leone (Add to your loop)
Mon, 10/26/2009 - 00:00

The children who need the most help may struggle in school and as adults.

Read more of TheLoop21.com's Red, Black and Green series on domestic violence.

No matter how well a woman handles it when her husband or boyfriend punches her, pushes her or otherwise hurts her physically, her children are going to be changed by domestic violence. They may have to switch schools if she decides to leave, or they may not be able to focus in school. They may withdraw or grow up thinking violence is completely normal, and the effects could follow them into adulthood.

Domestic violence is a cycle that pulls children in, and while it can be overcome as much as any other childhood trauma, it can seriously hurt children's chances for a good future. Knowing that is what gave Olive Walker the strength to leave an abusive relationship. She now runs a Los Angeles non-profit to help others, the Agape Foundation Against Domestic Violence Inc.

Black children are particularly at risk, because Black women are abused at rates 35 percent higher than white women, according to the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community. Meanwhile, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of people who abuse their partners also abuse children who live with them.

But children don't have to be abused themselves to face consequences. Just being a child in a home with domestic violence can cause problems, beginning earlier than you might think. Black women who are physically abused by husbands or boyfriends are more likely to use drugs or alcohol while they're pregnant. They're more likely to practice unsafe sex, which we all know can lead to more children.

Also, domestic violence is found more often in Black couples with low incomes — a factor that already makes children less likely to do well on standardized tests or have a high class rank or grade-point average. Only a little more than half of students from families with the lowest incomes in the United States end up going to college anyway.

Violence at home is often just one more obstacle for children already struggling to keep up with their classmates, and it can lead to others, like emotional problems or, if the family splits up, homelessness. These are the students who need extra attention in school and at home, but when you're focused on protecting your mother or even yourself, on acting like everything is normal at home when you're really terrified and angry, I can see how an education is low on the list of priorities. I can understand the temptation to give up and drop out, even though I don't agree with it.

By the time they're adults, boys who grew up in a home with domestic violence are twice as likely to be abusers themselves. The grown-up girls and boys may be in an abusive relationship of their own, which means they may be contributing to the eight million days of paid work — about the same as 32,000 full-time jobs — that victims of domestic violence miss every year. But then again, it's probably difficult to find a job without much of an education.

People who have known violence all their lives may not understand there is a way to escape an abusive relationship, even if friends or family members try to help.

So the cycle continues. And it will until more people in the Black community come forward to help families affected by domestic violence, making it financially possible for the victims to take their children and leave. It will continue until we can find a way to convince victims of domestic violence they need to take the dangerous step of leaving all they know for something safer and better — if not for themselves, then for their children.

Raechal Leone is TheLoop21.com's senior editor and content manager.

Video by Raechal Leone.

What would you do if you witnessed a domestic violence incident?

Personally intervene

Call the police

Not get involved