Breaking the cycle: Addressing the impacts of gender-based violence on Australian children and young people
‘Breaking the cycle: Addressing the impacts of gender-based violence on Australian children and young people’ blog article was written by Cait Thomas, Team Leader at Australian Childhood Foundation.
If you, or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 000. For confidential support regarding family violence, call 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732). To report concerns relating to a child, please contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
In Australia in mid-2024, gender-based violence has resurfaced in the media, resulting from (correct as at 7th May) the deaths of 27 women this year at the hands of men, most often men known to them.
For those of us working in the sector, the devastating impact of gender-based violence is certainly an overwhelming problem, but we know that it is not impossible to solve. Whilst the conversation continues in political and journalistic landscapes, and without trying to minimise the impact on women and gender-diverse people, it is worth attending to how gender-based violence impacts children and young people too. At intersections between these two groups of victims and survivors, there may be useful solutions linked to the supports we provide after violence.
Gender-based violence
Enabled by culturally normative marginalisation, gender-based violence disproportionately impacts women and girls, particularly those for whom cumulative risk issues apply. With roots in the colonial violence on which this country was formed, these types of violence are enacted within and maintained by structures of oppression and systems of power. Successive governments in Australia have suggested solutions, whilst, at the same time, presenting approaches that are limited in their holistic interpretations of the issue. This lack of understanding has sustained the siloing of institutions like the justice system and child protection services, which remain characterised by funding gaps, inaccessibility and sadly, at times, a failure to meet community needs.
Such violence can take many forms, like family and domestic violence, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and coercive control which can all impact children and young people. Occurring across cultures, classes, and socioeconomic statuses, it remains a chronic and unbearable risk. Especially as is the case for family violence, the number of victims is likely underestimated, especially for those who are children.
Accounting for the impact on children and young people
For children and young people faced with family violence, their growth, development, health, and wellbeing are often significantly impacted. Being a child who is a victim of family violence means increased risk of later life misuse of alcohol and other drugs, mental ill-health, homelessness, economic instability, externalising risk behaviours, and chronic health conditions.
Losing their sense of safety, their lives and identities are uprooted without trauma-informed approaches to supporting them. As practitioners, we must assume that even where children appear unharmed by, or not requiring support after violence, without early intervention like that provided by our therapeutic teams, trauma can manifest over time.
Broken systems, lacking communication
Unfortunately, safeguarding children also means addressing the many underlying structural causes of gender-based violence; the enabling forces and barriers that exist in our communities. Shockingly, we know that child abuse is also more likely to occur in families where violence is used. Yet services often rely on another parent to act protectively to safeguard children from harm, which a victim of family violence cannot always do. Assumptive narratives endure across communities that children are simply ‘exposed’ to incidences of violence, dismissing a child’s own relative victimhood.
We know that family violence often lurks under the surface within homes, ready to erupt at any moment, leaving children vulnerable and hypervigilant. However, first responders without trauma-informed education may have limited awareness of how to react to such underlying threats. When children and their mothers are eventually enabled to leave a violent home, crisis accommodation is not readily available in most places, leading to a significant risk of housing instability and homelessness. A payment is available for some victims, but specific evidence may be required to apply, and the funds barely cover the costs required to find shelter for a family, let alone beginning to repair the precipitating harm.
The ways violence is reproduced
For many children, violence can begin pre-birth, with the often harmful embedded gender roles assigned before a child is capable of understanding self-identity. Baby showers celebrate an unborn child’s gender, ritualistically upholding stereotypes of what it means to be a ‘girl’ or a ‘boy’, and simultaneously leaving no room for non-binary identities. Various studies have demonstrated the impact on the development of young children, leading to detrimental outcomes including the socialisation of violence.
Children and young people’s lives are also lived online from earlier in childhood than ever before, learning from and being guided by algorithmic social media and gaming platforms. Exposure to online materials that normalise sexual and physical violence and problematic or vitriolic discourse about women reinforce harmful narratives in young, malleable minds. Inevitably, what comes from this socialisation is a set of widely held attitudes across communities that subjugate women and other minority groups.
Cycles of violence continuing
Unfortunately, we’re not seeing the gains needed to stop violence being repeated across generations. A recent study pointed to an increase in sexual violence in adolescent Australian boys and men. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, family violence was reported to have increased significantly. Acknowledging the many ways in which children’s lives are shaped around structures that perpetuate gender-based violence, these steps backward might not cause shock. However, they should be shocking, and worthy of attention from those in leadership.
Trauma-transformative therapy as a strategy to end gender-based violence
At Australian Childhood Foundation, we acknowledge the significance of the trauma associated with living in a home where violence occurs. Our work is focused on supporting children who have experienced violations of safety, leading to trauma. We have advocated for change for almost 40 years and continue to do so with existing and new programs like On Us, and Our Collective Experience Project that seek to amplify the voices of victims and survivors of violence and abuse throughout communities and corporations.
However, cycles of intergenerational trauma continue, enabled by the substantial structural barriers that exist in our communities that exacerbate harm. Living in a home where family violence occurs is a precursor to both being a future victim and perpetrator of violence during adolescence and adulthood. These cycles of violence are woven through generations of families.
But, early intervention can be a critical circuit breaker. Trauma may be a risk for future violence, but intensive, therapeutic intervention can be an instrumental strategy for preventing these cycles of violence.
We can empower children and young people to regain agency after such experiences and build their capacity to ensure they are never again victims and don’t become perpetrators. We can shape communities around children that will support them in challenging moments, educated and reinforced by systems equipped to manage when things go wrong. The complexity of this issue needs no longer to be a barrier to change.
Supporting children and young people who experience trauma can be a first step in ending gender-based violence in our communities.
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