How children with experiences of intimate partner violence towards the mother understand and relate to their father.

The aim of this study was to describe how, in the aftermath of intimate partner violence against the mother, children understand and relate to their father. Face-to-face interviews with four girls and four boys, aged between eight and twelve, were analysed using an interpretative phenomenological approach. All of the children had been exposed to the father's violence towards the mother. Two super ordinate themes were identified in the analysis: the disjunctive image of the father and being entangled in a conflict. The children's understanding of the father and their relationship with him was built on different versions of the father and his actions; those experienced by the child and those recounted to them. The situational context surrounding the described experience pervaded the image of the father. An ambiguity appeared to exist in the sense of different versions of the father and children described different emotions that could both hinder and elicit other feelings connected to the father. Children also conveyed the sense of being trapped or entangled in a conflict where their own needs and desires could be deemed as unsafe to express, and that they felt responsibility for dealing with the father's influence.