ATTACHMENT PERSPECTIVES ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND FAMILY LAW

• Date: 01 July 2011
• Author: Alicia Lieberman,Jennifer McIntosh,Charles Zeanah
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-1617.2011.01390.x
• Published date: 01 July 2011

ATTACHMENT PERSPECTIVES ON DOMESTIC

VIOLENCE AND FAMILY LAW

Alicia Lieberman, Charles Zeanah, and Jennifer McIntosh

Lieberman and Zeanah are specialist clinicians, researchers, and prolific publishers in the areas of infant mental health,

attachment development in high-risk environments, and treatment of infant–parent relationship trauma. In this article, Lieber-

man and Zeanah discuss the impacts of domestic violence on the attachment security and development of infants and children

and address a number of implications for the family law context. Conundrums for parenting visitation and living arrangements

are considered, togetherwith the need for multidisciplinar y,early response and the pivotal role of family courts in directing this

response.

Keywords: attachment theory;domestic violence;family law

DIRECT AND INDIRECT IMPACTS OF DOMESTIC

VIOLENCE ON YOUNG CHILDREN

McIntosh: Professors Lieberman and Zeanah, as two people who have devoted much of your

working lives to studying the impacts of trauma on child development, the Family Court Review is

privileged to have this conversation with you. Reflecting on your research and clinical work with

families for whom domestic violence has been an issue, what risk factors most concern you about the

children involved?

Lieberman: There is no question that when a child witnesses domestic violence, the protective

shield that the parent represents for the child is severely damaged, if not shattered, so that the child

loses trust in the parent’s capacity to protect. Paradoxically, the child loses trust not only in their

fathers, when their fathers are the perpetrators, but also in the mother, who is more often than not the

victim of domestic violence. What we have seen in our research with children exposed to domestic

violence in the first three years of life is a very complicated set of emotional responses to both their

mother and father.

Zeanah: It’s certainly not an uncommon thing to encounter in routine outpatient settings. I would

guess somewhere between 40 to 50 percent of children in my clinic are from backgrounds involving

family violence and separation. It seems that divorcedkids are generally over-represented in the clinical

population. Sometimes divorce itself is a background factor, sometimes it’s a foreground factor.

Violence is foreground, but children respond to their fright in different ways. Some become very

withdrawn, and anxious or sad, or some other various combination of that.And others deal with their

fright by becoming aggressive. I do not know that wehave a good understanding about why outcomes

go one wayor the other, but clearly both things happen and can set up long-term problematic trajectories

for children. So it’s not just an “in the moment” thing, it sets them on a course that is very difficult.

Lieberman: Yes, absolutely.In situations where their father is the per petrator and whentheir f ather

has left, which is a common pattern, we find that the child often blames the mother for their father’s

departure and imitates the father’s aggressive behavior,in what we call identification with the aggressor.

This pattern of behavior is a survival mechanism that says, “I am like you,you do not need to hurt me,

I am doing just what you do.”The aggression is either towards the self or towards the mother.And that

becomes a template for how the child is going to be relating to women in intimate relations if the child

is a boy, or relating to herself in intimate relations if the child is a girl. But increasingly, as westay longer

Correspondence: Alicia.Lieberman@ucsf.edu; czeanah@tulane.edu; mcintosh@familytransitions.com.au

FAMILY COURT REVIEW,Vol. 49 No. 3, July 2011 529–538

© 2011 Association of Familyand Conciliation Cour ts