The country singer grew up with her mother Sharon and stepfather Jerry, who loved each other but also "fought a lot and got violent often".
On the Wild Card with Rachel Martin podcast, Twain admitted the violence sometimes extended to her and her sisters Jill and Carrie Ann.
"If I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, definitely. I mean, both my parents were pretty harsh physically," Twain said.
"We definitely got smacked around a lot, and kicked around sometimes, literally kicked around."
While she and her sisters were sometimes caught in the crossfire of the arguments, it was her mother and stepfather that always "hurt each other the most".
She recalled: "t was very violent. So my mom, you know, she would lose clumps of hair. She was bruised often in the face and... it was pretty bad sometimes. I mean, our house would shake. Those walls would shake.
"It's very traumatic. It gets loud and scary, like a really bad thunderstorm."
Twain continued to add Sharon "did often try to leave", and was sometimes successful, but their departures were always short-lived.
She said: "My mother did often try to leave. She did leave —we did leave — but he'd always find us, or she'd always give in and go back.
"It was a cycle."
Both Sharon and Jerry died in a car accident in 1987.
It's not the first time Twain has spoken about the violence within her childhood.
In her 2011 memoir From This Moment On, Twain claimed she was abused both emotionally and physically by Jerry for years, and recalled one incident where she tried to stop him after watching him beat up her mother.
She wrote: "I ran up behind my dad with a chair in both hands and smashed it across his back… Before I could get away, he punched me in the jaw. Adrenaline pumping, I punched him back!"
Twain's interview on On the Wild Card with Rachel Martin podcast is available to listen to now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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