This article is based on qualitative research that took place with 89 11- and 12-year-olds in Glasgow to find out their understandings of men’s violence against women. The research found that young people’s position within childhood directly impacts on how they conceive of, construct and understand violence. These positions within childhood are constituted and experienced differently. Therefore, young people’s understandings of men’s violence need to be theorised within a framework that illuminates the gendered, temporal and spatial elements of their accounts. This was achieved by developing a transitory framework to illustrate what young people define and name as ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ violence. Young people use gender but also space, childhood, temporality and age to frame their understandings of violence.