Efforts to promote the protection of and support to abused women have opened up for new understandings of children who see, hear or in other ways are exposed to violence in their family and its consequences. However, it is also clear that although different organisations working in the field of violence increasingly have come to share the understanding of children exposed to violence as subjected to violence and crime victims, there are also differences between organisations and the situation is not the same in all of the Nordic countries. The paper discusses the different approaches to the issue of children exposed to violence that currently can be seen Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. It draws upon a study of a selection of children’s rights and women’s shelter organisations in these countries. The paper outlines the differences and similarities between organisations and countries when it comes to ways of understanding, organisational activities and strategies in relation to policy change, particularly as regards the criminalisation of children’s exposure to violence. The patterns amongst these organisations raise the question to what extent well-established gender perspectives on men’s violence to adult women facilitate or inhibit recognition of children’s vulnerability and victimisation.