The results revealed that the children used three approaches for understanding their fathers’ use of violence against their mother: (1) conceptualizing the violent father as one of several “kinds” of fathers; (2) conceptualizing father’s violence as a minor part of his overall personality; and (3) conceptualizing violence as distant from father’s relative goodness. The findings indicated that the children did not normalize violence and, in fact, exhibited features of resistance in terms of their acknowledgement of their father’s violence as unacceptable and unusual. At the same time, however, the children applied meanings to their fathers that promoted their normalcy. Thus, the findings suggest that the normalization of a father’s violent acts should be separated from the normalization of a father as a person. The findings call for the development and specification of the theoretical concept of normalization, which should thus be a central focus of future research. Participants were 10 children aged 8 to 12 years who were recruited from 4 Women’s Houses (shelters) in Sweden. Participants completed semi-structured interviews in which they discussed three main themes: their father, fathers in general, and violence. Interviews were analyzed for emerging themes. References