Letter to the Editor: Research on Children Experiencing Domestic Violence

Abstract

Grounded in an ontological, theoretical and methodological position that views children’s views and experiences of domestic violence as critical to our understanding of those experiences, this letter to the editor reflects on Kimball’s (Journal of Family Violence, 31, 625–637, 2016) review of research since 1999 when Edleson’s influential article on children exposed to domestic violence was published (Journal of Interpersonal violence, 14(8), 839–870). Welcoming Kimball’s call for research that can ‘capture the full effects of children’s exposure’, we nonetheless challenge Kimball’s criticism of the paucity of research literature directly capturing children’s voices. Rather, we argue in this letter that Kimball’s (Journal of Family Violence, 31, 625–637, 2016) methodology excluded those published qualitative studies which have engaged directly with children and sought to understand their lived experience of domestic violence. We conclude by highlighting our alignment with Kimball’s assertion for the need to capture the voice and experience of children, but argue that this knowledge already exists. We also argue that some questions can only be answered by children and adolescents themselves.