ARTICLES The Double Whammy Revisited: The Impact of Exposure to Domestic Violence and Being a Victim of Parent to Child Violence AMY SILVERMAN AND RICHARD J. GELLES The current study tests the hypothesis that children who both experience and are exposed to domestic violence suffer from a 'double whammy' in terms of signifi- cant detrimental impacts. The hypothesis is tested by a secondary analysis of data collected for the Second National Family Violence Survey in the United States. There was no general support for the 'double whammy' hypothesis. However, girls aged 12-17, who were exposed to and experienced violence did experience more behavioural problems. Dr. Amy Silverman, Ph.D., is affiliated to the Hennepin County Medical Center, Minneapolis, USA; and Dr. Richard J. Gelles is the Joanne and Raymond Welsh Chair of Child Welfare and Family Violence, School of Social Work, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. INTRODUCTION Although child abuse, violence against women, and elder abuse have been transformed from being regarded as personal problems to becoming significant social issues and social problems, the intersec- tion between domestic violence and children has been largely over- looked. Children exposed to physical violence, verbal violence, and aggression in the home were overlooked for most of the three-decade transformation of family violence — from personal problem to social problem. In the last few years, there has been increasing attention paid to children exposed to domestic violence. Researchers extrapolating from the two National Family Violence Surveys estimate that be- tween 3.3 and 10 million children are exposed to domestic violence annually (Carlson, 1984; Straus, 1992). Clinicians too recognise that