
For children,
families are a source of learning and love.
All too often, however, intimate
partner violence can disrupt this family refuge
on which children and teens rely for
stability, support and nurture. Children’s exposure
to domestic violence is much
more common than generally believed.
The most recent national estimates indicate
that 15.5 million children in two-parent households
live in families in which intimate
partner violence occurred
at least once in the previous year.
Seven million of these children live in
households where the violence was considered severe.
1 A look across a range of studies has also
shown that there is a 30-60 percent overlap of families with
co-occurring child maltreatment and
domestic violence.