Theorizing Children's Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence Using Johnson's Typology

Abstract

Exposure to intimate partner violence ( IPV ) is known to negatively affect children in a variety of psychosocial domains. Nevertheless, the literature on children's exposure has remained rather unsophisticated despite tremendous advances in the adult IPV literature. Although Johnson's typology of IPV has been widely utilized and validated in the adult literature, there are no exposure studies to date that apply Johnson's typology or the concept of coercive control. To address this gap in the literature, I applied Johnson's typology to 27 studies of children's exposure based on different sampling approaches, dimensions of physical violence, and potential indicators of coercive control. Future research that explicitly measures coercive control and other contextual factors is needed to better understand the impact of IPV exposure.