Children: what they see

If you have children, they are probably the first thing you think about when you think about this relationship, and the first reason you give yourself for not deciding. This module does not tell you what to do about them. It tells you what tends to be true about children in homes where the adults are struggling, so that the thing you are weighing is real rather than imagined.

What children notice

Parents often believe that the worst of it happens after bedtime, or in the car, or in a lowered voice, and that the children are spared. The people who work with children say otherwise. Children hear through walls. They notice when one parent goes quiet as the other's key turns in the door. They notice who apologises and who never does. They learn to read the room before they can read a book.

What they take in is mainly the atmosphere rather than the dramatic moments: whether home is a place where you relax or a place where you check. A child in a tense house becomes a small expert in one adult's mood, which is a skill that costs them. Some become very good and very quiet. Some become loud, as if to draw the fire. Some get stomach aches on Sunday nights. Some are fine at home and fall apart at school, or the reverse.

They also take in a model of what a relationship is, by watching rather than by being told. If one parent's wants always come first, that is what a partnership looks like. If disagreement always ends in someone storming out, that is how disagreement goes. If one parent is frightened of the other, the child learns either that fear is part of love or that making someone frightened is a way to be loved. Both of those lessons are hard to unlearn later, and both are learned by watching rather than by being hit.

The law now counts children as victims in their own right

Until recently, children in these homes were described as witnesses. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which applies in England and Wales, changed that: a child who sees, hears or experiences the effects of domestic abuse between the adults who care for them is a victim of that abuse in law, not a bystander. Scotland's 2018 Act built children into its coercive control offence in a similar way, and Northern Ireland's 2021 Act did the same.

This matters for a practical reason. It means that services, schools, GPs and courts are supposed to treat the effect on your children as a harm in itself, not as a side issue to whatever is happening to you. If you have ever felt that no one would take it seriously because the children were never touched, the law is now on your side of that argument.

"I'm staying for the children"

This is the most common reason people give for staying, and it deserves to be examined rather than waved through or dismissed.

It is sometimes right. Separation is hard on children. It usually means less money, often a move, sometimes a change of school, and a loss of daily time with one parent. Where the adults are unhappy but the home is calm and nobody is frightened, children often do well enough, and the research on this is less dramatic than people fear.

It is sometimes a reason that was handed to you. If the home is not calm, if there is fear in it, then staying keeps children inside the relationship rather than protecting them from it. Separation may hurt them, and the question is: compared with what? Compared with a home where they hold their breath, a smaller flat with one steady parent is often the better of two hard options. What harms children is seeing that nobody could leave a frightening situation, not seeing a parent do it.

And it is sometimes a reason that is doing other work: covering fear of your partner's reaction, fear of money, fear of the family court, or simple exhaustion. Those are real reasons too. They just belong to you, not to the children, and it helps to call them by their own names.

What helps children, whatever you decide

You cannot undo the hard thing, but you can change what surrounds it.

• One adult who is steady. The strongest protection a child has in a difficult home is a parent who is reliably warm towards them, even when that parent is struggling. You do not have to be happy, only there.
• Being allowed to say it. Children who are told nothing fill the gap themselves, and usually with blame: either they caused it or they should fix it. A plain, age-appropriate sentence does more than silence. Grown-ups are having a hard time, it is not your fault, you are safe with me.
• Routine. Meals, bedtimes, school, the same film on Friday. Small, boring, predictable things are what safety feels like to a child.
• Not being used as a messenger or a referee. Children who carry messages between parents, or who are asked whose side they are on, pay for it.
• Someone outside the house who knows. A grandparent, a teacher, a club leader. A child who has one adult they can talk to does better than a child who has none, and the adult does not have to do anything but listen.

School and your GP as allies

Schools are used to this. Every school has a designated safeguarding lead, and you can ask to speak to them without it becoming a formal process. Telling them that things are hard at home means that your child's behaviour is understood rather than punished, that the school knows who may and may not collect, and that there is a record if you ever need one. Schools in England are also notified by the police when they attend a domestic incident at a pupil's home, so they may already know more than you think.

Your GP can do the same for you and for the children: listen, record, refer. Children's mental health services are stretched, but a GP's note that a child is living with conflict at home opens doors later.

Contact, the family court, and what is true about them

Many people stay because they fear that if they leave, their partner will get the children, or will get unsupervised time with them, or will use the court to keep the conflict going. Those fears are not foolish. The family courts in England and Wales start from the view that children benefit from a relationship with both parents, and they do sometimes order contact in situations that worry the parent who left. Reform is slow.

Two things are also true. The court must consider domestic abuse when it decides about contact, and there is formal guidance requiring it to. And the court is far more likely to take it seriously where there is a record: a GP note, a school conversation, a report to a service, a dated account in your own words. Which is why the modules before this one keep asking you to write things down.

We cannot advise you on your own case. A family solicitor, Rights of Women, or a domestic abuse service can, and legal aid for family matters is still available where there is evidence of abuse.

What this is not

This module does not say that your children are being harmed. Many children live through a parents' bad patch and are fine, and the fact that you are reading this suggests you are the kind of parent who notices. It does not say leave, and it does not say stay. It says: do not let "for the children" be a sentence you stop thinking at. Look at what they are actually living in, and weigh that.

Update your profile

Having read this, look again at this question. Answer for how things are now.

This exercise updates your profile (Safety). You can change your answers later.

Where to go next

• Staying safer while you decide. A plan that includes the children, for now.
• Co-parenting when control was the problem, for members who have separated.
• Is this danger?, if reading about what children notice made you see your home differently.