The research- and practice-based knowledge on the links between men’s violence to women and men’s physical, emotional, and sexual violence to children in the family is not always reflected in professional’s assessments of children’s safety and well-being. In the presentation it is argued that when there are children in the family, domestic violence is an attack not only on an adult victim (usually the mother), but on the children and the relationships in the family: between children and mothers, children and fathers, and between siblings. It is argued that a lack of recognition of relational aspects may at least partly be due to gendered notions of parenthood and professionals’ construction of mothers as mainly responsible for children’s needs, protection and safety. Furthermore, that a double standard for the parenthood of fathers contributes to the transformation of violent fathers’ possible neglect of, and violence to, their children into marginal issues. Against this backdrop the implications for policy and practice are discussed. It is argued that the lack of recognition of violence may create slightly different problems in different domains of policy-practice, due to the different cultural and institutional practices that mark, for example, the domains of ‘child protection’ and ‘custody and contact’ respectively.