This paper discusses violence to children within the family unit. Data for this study, which are purely qualitative in nature, were collected across rural and urban areas of four Afghan provinces: Bamiyan, Herat, Kabul and Nangarhar. This research has not attempted to investigate extreme or unusual cases of violence; rather, it is concerned with the more “normal” forms of violence which are part of people’s everyday lives, i.e. “everyday violence”. Violence directed at children in the family is divided into two categories: violence that is used as a form of discipline or punishment, and violence due to anger, stress or frustration on the part of the perpetrator. It is recognised that in reality there may be much overlap between these two categories; nevertheless, for the purposes of analytical clarity these two categorisations are useful.