Mothering Through Domestic Violence

Marianne Hester, Lorraine Radford

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781843104735
• eBook ISBN: 9781846425394
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Research into children and domestic violence in recent years has emphasized the importance of giving positive support to a non-abusive parent for effective child protection. But what exactly does positive support involve?

Based on findings from six primary research studies carried out by the authors themselves, as well as other published research, this book reveals how undermining mothering - specifically, family courts and social work agencies blaming mothers for their own victimization - plays a key role in locking women into abusive relationships and exacerbating the damage done by domestic violence. It explores the principle message drawn from the research: that the needs of individual victims should inform risk assessment and safety planning by welfare practitioners. Case studies are used to explore key issues that should be considered during assessment and planning, such as the psychological impact on children of living in an abusive household; mother and child protection from an abusive partner during court proceedings; and child contact with an abusive parent.

Mothering Through Domestic Violence is essential reading for practitioners working in the fields of family and child welfare, family courts and policy makers.

1

Introduction

In this book, domestic violence is taken to mean the coercive control of an adult by an intimate partner, involving physical, sexual, psychological and/or financial abuse. Domestic violence is prevalent worldwide, and it has a profound impact upon the health, emotional well-being, life chances and security of adults who are abused and the children who live with them. The language used to refer to this issue varies from the use of gender-neutral terms, such as ‘spousal violence’ or ‘partner abuse’, to terms which are gender-specific, such as ‘woman battering’, or terms like ‘family violence’ or ‘wife abuse’, which suggest that violence occurs in the context of a particular relationship (see Radford 2000). Variations in the language used to refer to a problem can reflect broader conceptual and ideological differences. A term can include and exclude, or emphasize, different aspects of the problem. In the UK, ‘domestic violence’ developed in the context of feminist research and activism since the 1970s, and it is now the most widely used term. It is also the term we prefer to use throughout this book.

We do not, however, wish to mystify the nature of the abuse by referring to domestic violence in a way that also implies gender neutrality. Domestic violence is a gendered crime. Like most violent crimes, it is predominantly men who are the offenders. Although victim surveys and research studies have shown that abuse of a partner can happen in gay and lesbian relationships and sometimes in heterosexual relationships where women use violence against men, women are most frequently the victims of domestic violence – they suffer the most persistent abuse and the most severe injuries (Walby and Allen 2004). Violence is gendered behaviour and it needs to be understood with reference to the power relations that legitimize and sustain it.

The term ‘domestic violence’ also implies that violence only happens in the home when people are living together, and not after a couple have separated. We will show in this book that this assumption is untrue, and that post-separation violence is a serious problem. Finally, the term ‘domestic violence’ invokes silo thinking about the nature of gendered violence. It implies that domestic violence is a different species of crime to rape, sexual assault, and the abuse and neglect of children. Available evidence from research shows that this is not the case. Domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, and some aspects of the abuse and neglect of children, especially child sexual abuse, co-exist on a sexual violence continuum (Kelly 1988). The interlinking of these aspects of domestic violence and sexual abuse on adults and children is a major issue that we explore in this book.

Mothering Through Domestic Violence is largely based on research we have conducted since the late 1980s into domestic violence, child abuse and children’s contact with violent fathers in heterosexual contexts (Dominy and Radford 1996; Hester and Pearson 1998; Hester, Pearson and Radford 1997; Hester and Radford 1992; Hester and Radford 1996a; Hester and Scott 2000; Hester and Westmarland 2005; Radford, Sayer and AMICA 1999). The book brings together some of the major themes we have identified from this research and, although deriving from research conducted in the European context, the themes we explore have resonance with issues and debates that have developed in North America and other industrially developed countries. Our wish to challenge the denigration of mothering, particularly the denigration of abused mothers that can occur in family courts, child protection agencies or as the result of activities by the media and fathers’ rights groups, has provided the main impetus for this work. In writing this book, we wanted to reflect on and recount what mothers have told us about their experiences of mothering in the context of domestic violence.

We also wanted to situate recent trends within a broader sociological analysis of gender, violence and power relations. Historically, the needs and rights of children have either been seen to be the same as those of their parents or they have been viewed as at odds with the needs and rights of their mothers (Smart and Sevenhuijsen 1989). This is very much the case today where one area of intense conflict, so-called ‘co-parenting’ and preserving a child’s contact with separated parents, is increasingly being seen as the major equality and children’s rights issue to be confronted by the family courts. It is with these complex issues of domestic violence, women’s rights and child welfare that the book is centrally concerned.

In the book, we explore how the political battle over children as emotional capital has had a profound impact on the gender entrapment of women living with domestically violent men. The backdrop for the book is the policy context that has developed and shapes our thinking about domestic violence. Domestic violence has had almost unprecedented policy attention in recent years. Since the mid 1970s there has been increasing recognition in the UK and the US of domestic violence as a crime. The criminalization of domestic violence was by the late 1980s beginning to have an impact, especially on police intervention and practice (Hester and Radford 1996b), although the impact on rates of arrest and prosecution has been variable and limited (Hester and Westmarland 2005; HMIC/HMCPSI 2004; Lees 1997). The criminalization of domestic violence has been linked to broader changes in the criminal justice system and tightening of control over crime and disorder – what Garland (2001) has termed a ‘culture of control’. Victims of crime hold a central space in the moral justification of the ‘tough on crime’ approach. This has been an ambiguous trend for feminists and anti-violence campaigners as on the one hand it is a welcome trend for the criminal justice system to be holding domestic violence perpetrators accountable for their abuse. On the other hand, there is a civil libertarian unease about the broader punitive framework, and scepticism about whether or not it all works. Support and advocacy for women experiencing domestic abuse are also essential.

Few believe or have ever argued that the criminal justice system alone can adequately deal with domestic violence. In the UK and the US, we have seen an associated ‘criminalization of social policies’ so that managing fear of crime is linked in with the policing of poor communities, the regulation of welfare claimants, single mothers, asylum seekers and other people living on the margins (Young 1999). The criminalization of domestic violence has occurred in the context of a liberalist onslaught against welfare services. Women fleeing domestic violence are consequently in more vulnerable positions regards access to longer term financial support and accommodation (Morrow, Hankivsky and Varcoe 2004). Policy trends in one area have undermined reforms elsewhere, often giving a two steps forward and one step backward form of ‘progress’ (Radford 2000). While the police and other agencies urge women to leave abusers, the family courts lock them into relationships after separation by making unsafe contact orders for children (Hester 2004; Saunders and Barron 2003). In this political context, mothers are set up to fail, individually because of their abusive partner’s tactics of control and, more generally, by the policy context that compounds the experiences of abuse. Throughout the book, court case reports, legal affairs and legal publications apply to England and Wales unless otherwise specified.

Questions we address in this book are as follows:

1.How does domestic violence affect mothering? How are the onset of the violence and the dynamics of abuse linked with expectations about what mothering should be? We investigate how domestic violence affects women’s health, resources and overall capacity for parenting. Considering a range of different contexts in which parenting and domestic violence occur, we discuss how living with abuse influences women’s identities as mothers.

2.How does abuse of the mother affect the children and the nature of the relationship between mother, father and child?

3.How do women cope with and resist the adverse consequences of living with domestic violence, even when a partner deliberately attempts to undermine the mother’s relationship with the children? We explore what women are able to do to protect themselves and their children.

4.Does law and social policy undermine or support mothers who have experienced domestic violence?

5.What options are there to give mothers better support, to improve the safety and emotional well-being of children and to challenge perpetrators?

The research on which this book is based

In considering these questions, we will draw upon findings from our research over several years. We bring together findings from six research studies we have completed on domestic violence.

Domestic violence and child contact arrangements in England and Denmark (the ‘contact study’)

The contact study was a qualitative study of what happened with child contact arrangements when women had separated from violent partners. We looked at:

•women’s experiences of negotiating and making arrangements for contact

•the practice of professionals and advisors – solicitors, court welfare officers (now CAFCASS [Children’s Family Courts Advisory and Support Services] children and family reporters), voluntary sector mediators and refuge workers (and their equivalents in Denmark)

•the effect of contact negotiations and outcomes on the safety and well-being of women and children.

The research developed from an earlier pilot project (Hester and Radford 1992). The interviews were carried out between 1992 and 1995. We looked at the experiences of women in two different national contexts, in England and in Denmark. Although we knew very little about the family law approach in Denmark when we began the research, we had assumed that the strong state support for women as mothers in the Danish welfare system (in terms of good public child care, generous parental leave, better funding for welfare benefits) might also be seen in support given to women separating from violent men.

In the contact study, we wanted to find out whether any history of domestic violence was taken into account when women became involved in negotiating contact arrangements between their children and abusive ex-partners. It made sense, therefore, to take women’s accounts of domestic violence as the starting point for our research. All the women in our sample had experienced violence and abuse from their male partners, with about half of them experiencing threats to kill. All had left their partners when we first contacted them.

Questions are often raised about the validity of research based on women’s accounts of domestic violence. Courts and professionals working with family law cases nearly always hear conflicting accounts of domestic violence from the parties involved in a case. Perpetrators do not usually see their behaviour as abusive or controlling, at least not in the same way and to the extent that the individual on the receiving end sees it (Dobash and Dobash 1998; Hearn 1998). What women consider harmful differs from what men see as violence or abuse. As Hearn concluded from his interviews with men who were violent to women:

Men generally define violence in much narrower terms than do women. The paradigm form of violence for men is physical violence. But even here certain kinds of physical violence are often excluded or referred to in passing. (Hearn 1996, pp.27–8)

Drawing on the notion that there are a multiplicity of accounts of the same ‘story’, it could be argued that women’s accounts need to be considered alongside the male perpetrator’s, as well as professionals’ and children’s perceptions of the same events. It was not possible for us to do this in the contact study. Many of the women would have been too frightened of repercussions if we had also talked to their ex-partners. We felt it was important for women to feel safe and not to feel vulnerable as a result of participating in the research. We therefore decided not to interview the violent partners and to concentrate on the experiences of the women, some of their children and a group of relevant professionals.

The contact study involved a series of in-depth interviews and observation work with 53 abused mothers in England and 26 abused mothers in Denmark. All the mothers were faced with making and living with decisions made about the post-separation contact and residence arrangements for their children. We were in regular face-to-face and telephone communication with the mothers for periods of up to two years, seeking ongoing information about the contact arrangements. Some of the women allowed us to observe contact negotiations and/or arrangements. Some allowed us access to their court papers. The observation work and interviews involved substantial contact with the women and the children. We met and mixed with a lot of the women’s children but, for ethical reasons, interviewed just two of the children who were living in England. Ideally, we would have liked to have interviewed more children and to have included children and young people from Denmark. Many of the children were very young at the time of the contact cases and were not considered suitable for interview. Many of the older children were under stress or deeply upset by the contact arrangements, and had been interviewed already by series of court-allied professionals; it would not have been appropriate for us to have asked them to participate in further interviews with a research team.

In the contact study, we also interviewed 99 professionals with experience of contact cases in the context of domestic violence. In England, we interviewed 77 refuge workers, solicitors, court welfare staff, mediators and contact centre staff. Twenty-two professionals with similar work experience were interviewed in Denmark. In this book, we focus in detail on the findings from the English contact study, especially in Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 7.

The contact study brought to the fore many examples of unsafe policy and practice and was, we believe justifiably, critical of the approaches taken by the courts and many professionals at the time. We have, however, since maintained a close dialogue with practitioners and policy makers, and carried out follow-up research (Hester 2002; Hester 2005). The contact study has had a direct impact on policy and practice regarding child residence and contact in England, Northern Ireland, Sweden and Denmark. In England, the research was cited as the basis for a number of interventions and amendments during the Parliamentary passage of the Family Law Act 1996, in the adjournment debate on the Children Act 1989 (Hudson 1996) and in the influential family court case Re L, V, M & H (Contact: Domestic Violence) [2000] 2 FL...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Walking on Eggshells – Mothering Through Domestic Violence
• 3. Resisting Mother Blaming
• 4. Domestic Violence and the Maltreatment of Children
• 5. Children Living with Domestic Violence – Impacts and Resilience
• 6. Re-asserting Power and Control in Child Visitation and Contact
• 7. Mother Blaming in the Courts
• 8. Improving Safety for Women and Children after Separation
• 9. From Blaming Mothers to Providing Positive Support – The Role of Welfare Agencies
• 10. Conclusion – Linking the Three Planets
• References
• Subject Index
• Author Index