When parents fight, children suffer "significant" harm, according to new research done at the Australian National University. The effect can be "highly traumatic and distressing".
"We found unfortunately children are often used as tools to enact coercive control," psychologist Nakiya Xyrakis said.
She and her colleagues looked at 51 studies done all over the world where the mental state of children was assessed along with the state of the parents' relationship.
The researchers correlated the two and found that where relationships of parents were bad, the mental state of children tended to be worse.
Central to the study is the idea of "coercive control" where one partner in a relationship tries to control the other either physically with violence or the possibility of violence or with emotional manipulation.
"Coercive control is a pattern of controlling behaviours and asserting dominance within an intimate relationship," Ms Xyrakis said.
It can include limiting access to money, gaslighting where a partner portrays the complaints of the other as some sort of failing - a madness even. Controlling joint finances is another method.
Ms Xyrakis said that a lot of the focus in the past had been on the plight of the adult victim - often a woman - "but children can be profoundly affected even if they aren't the direct target".
On top of that, children can be used as pawns in the argument.
"We found unfortunately children are often used as tools to enact coercive control," she said.
"The whole experience of children having to observe this dynamic can be highly traumatic and distressing for these children," the co-author of the study, Dave Pasalich, said, "so at times they might feel emotionally overwhelmed and their parents might not be well placed to respond sensitively."
"This comes at a time when kids really need that emotional support - it can have real implications on the quality of the parent-child relationship.
"It is something that can affect all different types of families - it doesn't discriminate."
"Kids are forgotten a lot of times in this space, but they suffer a lot," Ms Xyrakis added.
"There are situations when, for instance, kids might have to step up and take on the role of parent, or end up caught in the middle of complex, and often, scary relationship dynamics. Children aren't just passive witnesses."
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