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Abstract

This article examines the ways that domestically violent men assault women as mothers and their mothering. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 17 Australian men who had perpetrated domestic violence, this article reports their accounts of using this tactic. This tactic was found to be particularly pernicious and grounded in hegemonic representations of the “good mother.” Domestically violent men deployed this tactic instrumentally to exert power and control over women and children. Raising awareness of private and public assaults on women as mothers and their mothering is a critical step toward countering oppressive constructions of women mothering through domestic violence.

Keywords

child and family welfare domestic violence mothering

Definitions of domestic violence remain contested (de Haan, 2008). However, central to feminist understandings is that domestic violence constitutes a broad canvas of coercive behaviors perpetrated primarily by men to control women in intimate relationships that are embedded within wider structures of gendered inequality and sexism (Dobash, Dobash, Cavanagh, & Lewis, 2000). Men who perpetrate domestic violence deploy multiple tactics of coercive control, including physical, sexual, financial, and emotional abuse to exert power and control over female partners and ex-partners (Bancroft, Silverman, & Ritchie, 2012). This article explores one distinct tactic, namely, domestically violent men’s assaults on women as mothers and their mothering. There is a small, emerging literature on this form of abuse from the perspective of survivors (Humphreys, Thiara, Sharp, & Jones, 2015; Radford & Hester, 2006). This article extends understanding of this form of abuse by examining the perspectives of domestically violent men. Increasing our understanding of this tactic from their perspective could broaden and challenge current approaches to child protection policy and practice that narrowly conceptualize domestic violence as incidents of physical assault (Stark, 2007). Such approaches render invisible other tactics of coercive control, which harm and entrap women and children and can lead to practices that are based upon a fragmentary understanding of domestic violence and its impact on family life (Hughes, Chau, & Vokrri, 2016; Mulkeen, 2012; Strega et al., 2008).

Assaulting mothering is conceptualized in this article as embodying a diverse array of tactics intended to control and regulate women’s mothering experiences, identities, and practices before and during pregnancy, childbirth, and thereafter. These tactics sit alongside the use of physical and sexual violence and other tactics of coercive control described by Stark (2007) but are specific to women’s experiences of becoming and being mothers. Morris (2009) draws attention to the gendered nature of such tactics, locating them within an “abusive household gendered regime” (pp. 419–420). Assaults on mothering occur against a backdrop of hegemonic, gendered constructions of what it means to be a “good mother” (Goodwin & Huppatz, 2010, pp. 1–2) at a particular place and time. Given the cultural significance symbolically ascribed to mothering, this form of coercive control may be a particularly powerful tactic deployed by domestically violent men. Moreover, it has the potential to adversely impact the mother–child relationship, an area that Humphreys, Thiara, Sharp, and Jones (2015) contend remains marginalized in the mainstream domestic violence literature.

Knowledge about the dynamics and impact of domestic violence on women has primarily come from feminist research with women (Bograd, 1991) that has taken gender and power into account as key analytic constructs. Chung and Zannettino (2005) argue that despite many feminists’ reluctance to engage violent men in domestic violence research, such research is a “necessary component in the struggle to end violence against women and children” (p. 38). Danis (2003) demonstrates that when social workers lack a feminist perspective, they are more likely to engage in practices that result in repeated victimization of women. Moreover, Holden and Barker (2004) argue that there are many valid reasons to increase the scholarship in this area including to redress gender inequity and the pervasive practice of blaming mothers for children’s behavior problems linked to male violence, to develop more effective and specifically targeted programs for men who perpetrate domestic violence, to increase our understanding of the dynamics involved in situations where violence is transmitted intergenerationally, and to inform policy and practice in the fields of child protection and family law.

Despite the extensive body of evidence documenting the harmful impact of men’s violence against women (Vos et al., 2006; World Health Organization, 2005), children, and young people (Holt, Buckley, & Whelan, 2008; Kitzmann, Gaylord, Holt, & Kenny, 2003; Rivara et al., 2007), many domestically violent men continue to be exonerated from responsibility at the institutional level. For example, Hunnicutt (2009) argues that institutions of the state such as child protective services (CPS), the law and medicine construct many abused mothers as culpable for “failing to protect their children,” deviant for “selecting” violent partners, and complicit for “choosing to remain” in violent relationships. Such constructions were found to result in practices that obscured the role of domestically violent men and overburdened women survivors involved with child protection services or in the family law jurisdiction (Elizabeth, Gavey, & Tolmie, 2012; Laing, 2010; Mulkeen, 2012). Gordon (1989) demonstrates that such assaults have a long and tenacious history, are structural in nature and are embedded in gendered institutional practices that govern expectations of men and women as fathers and mothers.

Drawing on the narratives of men attending a men’s behavior change program (MBCP) and feminist perspectives on domestic violence, this article explores private assaults on women as mothers and their mothering and considers how such assaults may be oxygenated by institutional practices. In this article, I argue that gendered expectations governing mothering provide fertile ground, which domestically violent men can exploit.

Literature Review

Exploiting the Good Mother as a Tactic of Coercive Control

Motherhood studies demonstrate a wide variety of maternal experiences and practices, however, despite this variance, a stable expectation of the good mother is that she will love, care, and protect her children (Virokannas, 2011). Additional good mother benchmarks in contemporary Western societies include being intuitive nurturers (Krane & Davies, 2007), white, middle class (Arendell, 1999), heterosexual (Rawsthorne, 2010), intensive mothers who always place children’s needs above their own self-interest (Hays, 1996), responsible (Miller, 2005), and predominantly happy (Johnston & Swanson, 2003). Ruddick (1995) argues that “mothering is an intentional practice with the goals of preserving life, fostering growth, and training children to participate effectively in their families and societies” (p. 77). Furthermore, Ruddick (1989) proposes that “maternal thinking” embeds “maternal work” and argues that neither can countenance violence or oppression in any form.

Rich (1976) was among the first feminist writers to document the strong social pressure that women face to accede to the hegemonic construction of the good mother. Goodwin and Huppatz (2010) argue that “the good mother has been established as a normative construct, a mechanism through which women do what they should” (p. 4). Moreover, the authors demonstrate that the contemporary literature on the subject reflects a good mother–bad mother binary, benchmarking which mothering experiences and practices are rendered socially and culturally acceptable and which are not. Mother blaming practices change across time and space reflecting shifting benchmarks regarding how the good mother is constituted. For example, Franzblau (2002) historicizes the agility of mother blaming practices spotlighting how working mothers have been variously vilified and valorized depending upon the economic and political imperatives of the day.

The good mother benchmarks have been constituted on idealized scenes of family life and motherhood, which are potentially oppressive to all women. However, representations of the good mother can cast a particularly dark shadow over the lives of women who mother in the context of domestic violence. The good mother benchmarks shroud the oppressive context within which many survivors of domestic violence mother and risk decontextualizing or misunderstanding their lived experiences. At an institutional level, feminist critiques of CPS responses to families experiencing domestic violence center on at best, gender blind and at worst blatantly sexist, practices. These practices measure women survivors against decontextualized good mother benchmarks and ultimately construct them as bad mothers (Virokannas, 2011). Humphreys and Absler (2011) argue that such practices hold women survivors responsible for men’s violence and offer solutions based upon a “child rescue” discourse.

Drawing upon the work of Foucault (1977), Spigel and Baraister (2009) argue that because most women desire to be good mothers, they comply with the normative script prescribed by their culture and regulate themselves accordingly in a process of subjectification. Medina and Magnuson (2009) argue that women who mother in marginalized contexts, including within violent, impoverished, or otherwise disadvantaged circumstances, are particularly vulnerable to idealized social constructions of the good mother. Skyes (2011) argues that identifying as a good mother is particularly important for marginalized women who are often already stigmatized due to their social locations and may be the subjects of investigations within the CPS (Hughes et al., 2016). Domestically violent men who exploit women’s own desires to be good mothers deploy a particularly formidable tactic of oppression, one which threatens a central aspect of many women’s identities. Research from women and children overcoming domestic violence demonstrates that domestically violent men use different aspects of women’s experiences as mothers and their constructions of motherhood to abuse and entrap them (Radford & Hester, 2001; Thiara & Humphreys, 2015).

Women’s and Children’s Accounts of Assaults on Mothering

Women report that assaults on mothering often begin prior to conception and childbirth. For example, women’s choices to become mothers may be violated through reproductive coercion, which may include contraceptive sabotage, pregnancy coercion, and intimidation or pressure with regard to reproductive decision-making (Burton & Carlyle, 2015). Pregnancy may precipitate, perpetuate, or be a consequence of domestic violence. Abused women have an increased risk of premature labor, experience a higher number of terminations, miscarriages and can suffer stillbirth after assaults (Wokoma, Jampala, Bexhell, Guthrie, & Lindow, 2014). Abused pregnant women are considered high risk due to increased maternal, fetal, and infant mortality and morbidity (Mauri, Nespoli, Persico, & Zobbi, 2015).

Assaults on mothering after the birth of a child are pervasive and varied. Common tactics used by domestically violent men to assault mothering described by women and children include undermining maternal authority, interrupting women’s and children’s sleep patterns, directly interfering with women’s parenting, using children as weapons, involving children in the abuse of their mothers, directly abusing children, disallowing mothers to assuage traumatized children, sowing seeds of division, constructing role reversals by parentifying children, and infantilizing mothers (Bancroft et al., 2012; Humphreys, 2009; Radford & Hester, 2006). Moreover, abusive current and ex-partners often use the family courts to continue coercive control after separation (Elizabeth et al., 2012; Morris, 2009).

The mothering by women survivors was initially described as deficient in early research (Levendosky & Graham-Bermann, 2001; Wolfe, Crooks, Lee, McIntyre-Smith, & Jaffe, 2003). More recent studies have highlighted the multiple ways that many mothers compensate for and mediate the impact of domestic violence for their children (Humphreys, Thiara, & Skamballis, 2011; Lapierre, 2008; Radford & Hester, 2006). Violations against mothering can have an ongoing impact on the mother–child relationship even when the perpetrator is no longer physically present (Humphreys & Thiara, 2015) and often contribute to women’s decisions to leave domestically violent partners (Semaan, Jaskinski, & Bubriski-McKenzie, 2013). Many women do separate but as coparents remain bound to abusive ex-partners through child/ren’s contact with their fathers. Postseparation parenting orders further limit their ability to ever be completely free from violence and other assaults on their mothering (Laing, 2016; Zeoli, Rivera, Sullivan, & Kubiak, 2013).

Men’s Accounts of Domestic Violence

Although few studies have specifically elicited domestically violent men’s perceptions of assaulting women as mothers and their mothering per se, there has been increased interest in eliciting domestically violent men’s general accounts of using violence and other tactics of coercive control (Anderson & Umberson, 2001; Gadd, 2000; Hearn, 1998). The literature in this area has found that violent men typically deny, minimize, and externalize blame to exculpate themselves from taking responsibility for their violence and other tactics of coercive control (Dobash et al., 2000; Gondolf, 2002). Adams, Towns, and Gavey (1995) found that men deployed a range of rhetorical devices to convey their sense of male entitlement and exert control over women and children. These devices have the potential to disenfranchise survivors from maintaining their own “beliefs, memories, values and emotions” (p. 387), which can extend into the mothering arena.

Domestically violent men impose a pattern of control over women and children in the domestic sphere and demand special rights and privileges without accompanying reciprocal responsibilities (Bancroft et al., 2012). Harne (2002) argues that domestically violent men’s fathering practices, including the ways in which they choose to relate with children’s mothers are bound up with constructions of dominant masculinity that are integrally connected to their violence and control of women in familial relationships. Men who batter have been found to hold particularly rigid gender role expectations and sexist attitudes, which extend to their beliefs about what constitutes a good mother (Dobash & Dobash, 1998).

This research explored domestically violent men’s accounts of assaulting women as mothers and their mothering, a tactic of coercive control that is largely unexplored from the perspective of men who perpetrate domestic violence. As a result, their views regarding the dynamics and impact of assaulting women as mothers and their mothering remain unclear. The purpose of this research is to understand (1) if, and how, domestically violent men describe using mothering as a vehicle to abuse women and children, and (2) their perceptions of the impact of this form of abuse on women and children.

Method

Sources of Data

This article is based upon data collected from a larger study examining the fathering practices and experiences of domestically violent men. Participants were recruited from a MBCP in one of the top five local government areas for reported rates of domestic violence in Sydney, Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010). To be eligible to participate, fathers had to be over 18 years of age and had to have resided with their child(ren) and the child’s biological mother for at least one year. They also had to be currently or previously involved in the fathering of their child(ren) and acknowledge using domestic violence against their child’s biological mother.

Participants

Seventeen men who were at various stages of involvement in the MBCP participated: five were on a wait-list, five had completed four sessions, and three had completed all 18 sessions. Four men did not specify how many sessions they had completed. Eleven participants were court mandated to attend the program. Men consented to participating in the study, which was approved by and complied with all requirements of the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Sydney (Protocol Number 2012/1646).

Participants were aged between 26 and 46 years, with an average age of 35 years. Fifteen men identified their cultural background as Aboriginal (3), non-Aboriginal (11), and overseas born (1). Relationship status was described as married (three), de facto (six), separated (four), and single (four). Men were biological fathers to a total of 45 children, two of whom had died in two separate families. Seven men cohabitated with nonbiological children, however, only four identified themselves as stepfathers. Fifty-one children (45 biological and 6 stepchildren) ranged in age from three months to 22 years. Forty-three percent of participants indicated that they earned less than AU$20,000 per year and 80% indicated that they earned less than AU$40,000 per year. One third of men were unemployed and received government benefits. Six men were permanently employed on a full-time basis. Half of the participants cited Year 10 as their highest school level completed. Nearly half of the men had criminal convictions for domestic-violence-related offences and 65% had been the subject of current or previous civil protection orders.

Data Collection

Face-to-face interviews were conducted with all participants individually by a masters-level qualified social worker with substantial experience in the child welfare and domestic violence fields. All interviews were reviewed with a doctoral-level qualified social worker. A qualitative method using semistructured, in-depth interviews was utilized loosely guided by the following anchor points: experience of being a father, experience of domestic violence and perception of one’s own role, and understanding the impact of domestic violence on partners (including women as mothers), children, and other family members. All participants gave permission to audiotape interviews and written transcripts were made from the audio files. Participants and their family members were assigned pseudonyms, which have been used in this article, to ensure anonymity.

Data Analysis

Thematic analysis, as described by Braun and Clarke (2006), involved reading and rereading and listening repeatedly to each interview individually in order to organize the transcripts or data items into categories and subcategories. Coding of each line of each transcript was completed using the NVivo Version 10 program. Once concepts were coded within data items, patterns across the data set were explored. Initially, broad themes were identified, which included “children, domestic violence, fathering, interventions, people and organizations, mothering, narratives of self, and relationships with partners”. Subcategories within codes were also developed. Of particular relevance for this article are the subcategories that existed within the codes, “partners as mothers” and “images of domestic violence.” The code, “partners as mothers” included the following subcategories: “comments about partner’s mothering, images of pregnancy, relationships with children, the impact of domestic violence, and role of mother.” The code “images of domestic violence” contained further subcategories including “tactics,” “images of control,” “exposure of children and young people,” “explanations,” and “impact.” Across these categories and subcategories, myriad descriptions of assaults on women as mothers and their mothering were identified. The descriptions were coded as “men’s use of physical violence and nonphysical abuse,” “physical assault during pregnancy,” “degrading women as mothers and mothers’ approach to mothering,” “making mad and bad mothers,” “attacking women’s sense of competency,” “teaching children to disrespect mothers,” “forcing tough love approaches,” and “impact of assaulting mothering.”

Theoretically, the analysis was influenced by an approach adopted by Perel and Peled (2008) in their research with domestically violent men. This approach integrated feminist understandings of domestic violence, particularly radical, poststructural, and intersectional with phenomenological principles. This integration provided room to explore the men’s subjective meanings while simultaneously attending to wider structural aspects of their relationships and context including, gender, class, and cultural considerations.

Trustworthiness

Assessing the trustworthiness of the data involved attending to issues of dependability and confirmability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Dependability involved maintaining accurate and full records of all aspects of the research process. Confirmability involved using techniques such as reflexivity to minimize research bias. Pink (2001) argues that reflexivity involves being cognizant of the implications of methods, values, biases, and actions in relation to the analysis of data. Reflexivity was facilitated through regular supervision, which occurred throughout the life of the research project with an expert in the field of violence against women. In supervision, discussions occurred which involved interrogating personal values and/or assumptions in order to ensure that they did not manifestly influence the research findings. Reflexivity was also facilitated throughout the research process and is documented in the extensive “memos” or field notes that were compiled. Authenticity involved considering issues of fairness and the practical application of the research findings. Fairness in this sense was concerned with the degree to which the research fairly represented the participants’ viewpoints.

Results

Men’s Use of Physical Violence and Nonphysical Abuse

The data show that direct assaults on mothering occurred within a wider context of domestic violence. For example, men described deploying a wide array of tactics including physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, and financial abuse in their relationships with women and children. For example, 16 of the 17 participants described subjecting women and children to frightening displays of aggression. The majority of men (11) described destroying property and threatening to use violence against their children’s mothers. Three men indicated that they had attempted to strangle, smother, or drown their partners and one man indicated that he had choked his partner on repeated occasions. Six men indicated that they had made homicidal and suicidal threats in front of children. The majority of men described how they used violence instrumentally to ensure the supremacy of their needs for authority, control, and to gain what they perceived of as “respect.”

Men reported physically and sexually abusing current and ex-partners. Collectively, men reported that they had physically assaulted women in the following ways: pushed, grabbed, and shoved; restrained; slapped in the face, body arms, or legs; assaulted with objects; punched in the face, body, arms, or legs; strangled, smothered, or held under hot water; kicked on the body, arms, or legs; had arms twisted; kicked in the face; dragged or pulled by the hair; kicked or punched in the stomach when pregnant; and choked. Moreover, two men reported that they had “forced their partners to have sex or sexual activity” and four men indicated that they had “demanded sex when their partners didn’t want it.”

While it is acknowledged that children do not need to visually witness physical or sexual violence to be deleteriously affected, more than half of participants indicated that children had visually witnessed severe and frequent physical assaults. Men did not report the whereabouts of children during sexual assaults. In many instances, children were at risk of suffering physical harm, as in the following account where the perpetrator was holding his infant son in his arms when he assaulted the child’s mother: “she got in my face and I, I pushed her out of the way and she fell back on our lounge and cracked her head open.”

Physical Assault During Pregnancy

Over a third of men reported attacking pregnant women and unborn children. All men who had assaulted women during pregnancy described committing serious assaults that either led to or had the potential to lead to lethal outcomes. One man indicated that he pled guilty to assaulting his ex-partner with a chair and kicking her in the stomach when she was pregnant. This led to his ex-partner going into premature labor, and the baby being stillborn. Another man described nearly killing his ex-partner and unborn child in a motor vehicle incident:

Steven:

We had an argument on the way home I don’t know why or what it was about but I pulled the hand brake on as we were driving along and the car spun around a few times you know and I’m thinking shit she’s pregnant with me (sic) child.

Men justified these attacks saying they occurred because of their partners’ “inappropriate behaviors” while pregnant. They used mutualizing language to exculpate themselves from responsibility, describing “fighting with” or “arguing with” partners and ex-partners. To further decrease their accountability, they justified the “fights” or “arguments” saying they resulted from their partners’ alleged misuse of substances that could harm the unborn child. However, no man described how assaulting pregnant women could kill or harm unborn children.

Degrading Women as Mothers and Mothers’ Approach to Mothering

Participants described various ways of degrading women as mothers, which served many purposes. Men described how sabotaging the mother–child relationship made women vulnerable and ensured that men had “the upper hand.” Many men openly acknowledged the instrumental nature of such attacks:

Dennis:

I was trying to be hurtful and I was being abusive deliberately I couldn’t even claim that I didn’t know what I was saying I knew exactly what I was saying and I knew why I was saying it.

The majority of men described using such tactics in order to derail maternal power and authority. They were aware of the deleterious impact that these tactics had on the ability of their partners to enjoy being a mother and to parent their children effectively. However, no man expressed concern or remorse about the impact on women and children.

Making “Mad” and “Bad” Mothers

A number of mothers were described as suffering from mental health and substance abuse problems, which men believed limited their ability to adequately mother their children. Quite apart from their accounts of the potential emotional and/or psychological impact of domestic violence on their partners, eight men constructed partners and ex-partners as women with a multitude of mental health and/or drug and alcohol problems. They did not perceive of these “problems” as being related to the abusive and oppressive circumstances that they had directly created through their use of violent and other coercively controlling behaviors. In their view, women had preexisting conditions.

Jonathan:

She’s got a long history of she is in my unprofessional opinion, BiPolar and Schizophrenic and um in full active addiction with any drug known to mankind…. Um she is one sick puppy but there is a side of her as well which seems very normal but she’s very good at controlling and manipulating people, she’s a very intelligent sick person and she knows how to play that sickness to a tee with the authorities and be normal when she has to be…she’s been put through like she’s been in and out of psychiatric wards and they all say she’s fine.

Three women who were reportedly suffering from depression were disbelieved by their partners. Their symptoms were constructed by their partners as evidence of their inherent “laziness” or predisposition to be “angry all the time.”

Barry:

She says she did (have postnatal depression) now but it’s easy in hindsight to say it I mean why didn’t they diagnose that at the time? That’s a good excuse, postnatal depression…for women to say oh yeah I had postnatal depression.

What would it excuse?

Barry:

Struggling, struggling to be a good mother…to me she was just lazy.

Two men whose children had been removed by CPS from the care of their mothers were placed into their care, despite the fact that they had perpetrated chronic and severe domestic violence. These men constructed women as purposefully “choosing” alcohol and drugs over their children, a sentiment that they shared with their children:

Troy:

She decided for drugs more than kids…(the child) doesn’t understand, she has heard conversations and has seen her mum off her face, she knows what her mum’s done. We say your mum loves you but she says if mum loves me she will be here. She knows, you know what I mean, that’s the sad part.

Neither man stated any awareness of how their domestic violence may have contributed to the alleged substance abuse problems of their ex-partners.

Attacking Women’s Sense of Competency

Men described deploying overt psychological attacks on women as mothers and their mothering practices. For example, men described targeting aspects of their partner’s identity that they cared deeply about and/or that contributed to their feelings of self-esteem and self-worth. In this vein, mothering was the most common area targeted, with many men shaming women for failing to meet men’s perceived standards around what constitutes a good mother. Moreover, men described verbally abusing women for failing to meet stereotyped standards of femininity. The aspects of womanhood that men most frequently targeted to degrade women were specific to gendered stereotypes about how women should look, act, and behave:

Dennis:

My abuse towards her was very personal and very direct and it didn’t miss and I know like it it’s created damage and hurt that she remembers it whether it’s about her physical appearance or about her ability as a mother, her ability as a worker.

Women’s appearance, and particularly their weight, was a frequent subject of criticism. A mother of five children who struggled to return to her prechildbirth weight was continually abused about her weight and accused of being unfaithful by her partner:

Jamie:

I might throw a comment about her weight cause after the kids…it was easy something I knew was gonna hurt her…you’d have a big argument who she’d been out with or who’ve you been sleeping with?

Another man described how he would continuously call his partner a “fat thing” because she was “a bit overweight.” Many of these verbal gendered tirades occurred in front of children.

Many men constructed partners as incompetent mothers, criticizing them for being “too passive,” “too aggressive,” and/or “too concerned for the happiness of their children.” There appeared to be limited appreciation for the constrained context in which abused women parented. Many men described women as unassertive and ineffective disciplinarians. They seemed unaware of how their abusive attitudes and behaviors might have compromised their partner’s ability to mother in her desired fashion. One father who had admittedly treated his stepson “like shit” and showed him “more hatred than love” criticized his partner for being too concerned about the happiness of her children at the expense of discipline. In this instance, the mother was dealing with the impact of her son’s depression, self-harming behavior, suicide attempts, and entry into out-of-home care.

Most men reported deploying deliberate attacks on their partner’s identity as a competent mother in order to lower her self-esteem, make her feel inadequate, and vulnerable to the scrutiny of CPS. Many men threatened to report women to child protection authorities or to “take the kids,” constructing women, as one man did, as a “fucking slack mum.” As is the case in the following examples, children were frequently exposed to such attacks:

Scott:

Why her mothering? It was just to assert power over her to let her know I can stop you any time you want. You know I may not hit you but I may as well hit you cause what I’m saying to you is having the same effect; it’s you know it’s, it’s attacking something…that probably means the most to her, her identity, being and sense of worth. It’s to say you’re a hopeless mother you can’t even do this, you know you’re whingeing about this you know that’s your job you can’t even do that, why did you become a mother?

Teaching Children to Disrespect Mothers

Many men described actively teaching their children to disrespect and abuse their mothers. For example, an 11-year-old boy was coerced into siding with his stepfather, who constructed the boy’s mother as “useless, lazy, stupid, and incompetent.” By supporting this construction, the boy was intermittently rewarded and protected. At other times however, this placed him at risk of physical abuse for failing to demonstrate respect for his mother:

Mike:

He calls his mother a fat whore and I ark up at him about it…it’s come close to me punching him in the mouth a few times.

Other men also described adopting this inconsistent approach and seemed equally unconcerned about the bind that they placed their children in. Some men who had completed the MBCP felt transformed by this process and became especially intolerant of any perceived signs of “disrespect” within the family environment.

Forcing “Tough Love” Approaches to Mothering

Many men pressured women into “taking a stand” against their children, encouraging mothers to “kick them out of the home,” due to their perceived disobedience and disrespect toward their mothers. Some men verbally acknowledged their own hypocrisy, but despite this, continued to pressure their partners to remedy the situation that they had created by establishing environments replete with examples of disrespect and abuse. For example, a participant described how he had already begun to sow the seeds of division between his new partner and her children by advising her on how to parent her teenage son, who was conceivably coping with the participant’s recent move into his family home. This involved encouraging the boy’s mother to send him away to live with his biological father.

Some mothers were criticized for being “too aggressive” with their children. Many men seemed unaware of the connection between child behavior problems and chronic exposure to domestic violence. Apropos of this, there seemed to be limited understanding of the additional difficulties involved in mothering traumatized children. When men criticized their partner’s mothering skills, it was often in relation to her alleged inability to restrain aggression toward the children when she was finding it hard to cope with their behavior.

Men’s Accounts of the Impact on Women and Children

Participants described a wide range of physical, psychological, social, and emotional consequences on women and children of living with domestic violence generally. These consequences included the death of an infant due to premature labor precipitated by a domestic assault, the repeated suicide attempts of an 11-year-old boy, numerous miscarriages, serious and potentially life-threatening illnesses and injuries sustained by women and children, the removal of 21 children from their families, and the ongoing emotional and psychological effects of living in a chronic state of fear and terror.

Most men articulated their perception of how more overt forms of domestic violence impacted children generally, but believed that their children had not been harmed. Similarly, most men perceived that assaulting women as mothers could have a deleterious impact on children’s development and on mother–child relationships but denied or minimized the impact on their children. Of the nine men whose children had been removed by CPS, only one acknowledged that domestic violence had resulted in a disruption to the mother–child relationship. Most men believed that their partners probably experienced motherhood as stressful, burdensome, lacking enjoyment, lonely, and depressing.

Most men perceived that children blamed their mothers for the existence of domestic violence and viewed their mothers as powerless and hopeless. These men believed that children saw them as the patriarchs of the family who had the ultimate decision-making authority and power:

Scott:

I wouldn’t say it’s a conscious thing but I think that’s a result that it creates that impression that I, that you know I am the, the top dog so to speak that okay um mummy and daddy might say one thing but daddy displays a whole different attitude that when push comes to shove, Dad’s at the top of the food chain.

Four of the 17 men reported that their children probably “hated” their mothers for “not do(ing) anything about” the violence and abuse that they perpetrated. These men based these beliefs in their own childhood experiences. For example, they recalled experiencing such feelings toward their own mothers who had been victims of domestic violence.

Men who acknowledged deliberately undermining their partner’s parenting in front of their children seemed perplexed at the effect that it had on her authority as a mother. For example, a man expressed confusion about why his son “doesn’t like to listen to his mum a lot and always looks at (him).” Only one man indicated that he believed that his abusive attitudes and behaviors had resulted in his children losing respect for him. Many men perceived that their partners were inconsistent and indecisive mothers who were not respected by their children.

Discussion

This study explored domestically violent men’s assaults on women as mothers and their mothering as a distinct tactic of coercive control occurring in the private domain. It found that domestically violent men used multiple and diverse methods to target this integral aspect of women’s identities, which they described in detail. Attacking pregnant women, degrading and constructing women as mad or bad, teaching children to disrespect their mothers, assaulting women’s sense of competency, and pressuring women to perform “tough love” approaches to mothering were all strategies described by domestically violent men. Radford and Hester (2001) argue that such tactics and particularly attacks on pregnant women have the dual intention of exerting power and control over both partners and children.

The study also found that although most men articulated an awareness of the deleterious impact of this tactic on women and children, it did not preclude their continued use of abusive tactics. In fact, many men described assaulting women as mothers because the tactic was effective in helping them to achieve the desired results. These findings suggest that efforts to end men’s violence against women are contingent upon more than simply educating men about the impact of violence and other coercive tactics on women and children.

Men used hegemonic constructions of the good mother as a battering ram to exert power and control over women and children. It was obvious that many men understood and indeed exploited the power of women’s desires to be good mothers to meet their own needs. Targeted attacks on women as mothers and on their mothering occurred within the wider context of relationships characterized by male violence against women. For example, nearly half of the group had criminal convictions for domestic-violence-related offenses, and 65% had been the subject of current or previous civil protection orders.

Institutional practices by men who assault women as mothers and their mothering were also evident through the men’s accounts. For example, 21 children were removed from the care of their mothers, for reasons directly attributable to men’s violence. Moreover, in two families, two children were effectively placed in the care of their fathers through CPS placements with the paternal grandparents. This enabled the men who had directly created the context for the child protection concerns to effectively be given parental responsibility. Such unjust, gender blind practices are well-documented in the literature (Hughes et al., 2016; Mulkeen, 2012; Strega et al., 2008). From a theoretical perspective, Westlund (1999) argues that survivors of domestic violence experience both “premodern” and “postmodern” power. In the patriarchal domestic sphere, male partners/sovereigns may employ tactics used in the premodern state, where corporal punishment was deployed in an “intensely corporal and brutal manner” (p. 1045) to emphasize the unequal relationship between sovereign and subject. At the same time, survivors of domestic violence are subjected to the impersonal, meticulous, diffuse tactics of power and control deployed by postmodern institutions such as CPS, courts, and medicine. The majority of participants understood and indeed used the power inherent within postmodern institutions to further abuse partners, ex-partners, and children. For example, many men reported partners and ex-partners to CPS alleging that they were unfit mothers due to mental illness and/or substance misuse. These institutions frequently pathologize victims of domestic violence “analyzing their psychological and emotional life rather than focusing on the batterer’s quest for power and control” (p. 1059) and ultimately diagnosing her with a mental health issue (Westlund, 1999) or assessing her as a parent who “failed to protect.”

Assaulting women as mothers and their mothering is effective because of the hegemonic construction of the good mother and the institutional practices that result from this construction. Such practices produce and reproduce normative benchmarks against which women are unfairly judged and serve as fertile ground for domestically violent men to exploit. It was very clear that many men understood the potency of this tactic. The findings of this study are consistent with feminist perspectives of domestic violence, which demonstrate that violence against women is embedded within wider social and cultural structures that promote sexism (Dobash et al., 2000; Stark, 2007).

Limitations

Given the small sample size and fact that the majority of men resided in the same geographical area, it could be argued that the conclusions drawn from this enquiry are only applicable to the participants. Despite these sampling limitations, the enquiry achieved the desired goal of eliciting a wealth of rich qualitative data in an underexplored area.

Conclusion

Increasing the awareness of private and public assaults on mothering is a critical step toward countering unfair constructions of abused women who mother within oppressive contexts. In order to counter hegemonic constructions of the good mother which are problematic to all women, and particularly oppressive to women overcoming domestic violence, it is first necessary to increase our understanding of how domestically violent men strive to regulate women’s mothering experiences, identities, and practices. Interventions that are underpinned by such knowledge can lead to practices that ultimately help women and children “untangle self-blame and mother-blame” (Moulding, Buchanan, & Wendt, 2015, p. 250). Such interventions spotlight the substantive issue of men’s violence against women and children and its impact on all aspects of family life. Such interventions also shine a light on the wider societal and cultural structures and practices that ground mother blaming, making domestically violent men’s assaults on mothering particularly oppressive. This is counter to current mainstream practices that frequently scrutinize and pathologize women’s mothering experiences and practices in a decontextualized fashion. The “Safe and Together” model, which is gaining traction in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia, challenges sexist institutional attitudes and practices (Mandel, 2015) by placing responsibility on male perpetrators for ending and ameliorating the impact of their violence. The model also promotes institutional practices that hold men to high standards of accountability as fathers. This model is based upon much empirical evidence that shows that children’s recovery from domestic violence is more likely to occur in the context of a nurturing relationship with their mothers and that many women survivors engage in resilient mothering (Humphreys et al., 2011; Lapierre, 2008; Radford & Hester, 2006).

Increasing the knowledge base regarding men’s perceptions of the dynamics and impact of assaulting mothering in the context of domestic violence has the potential to increase our understanding of the constrained private context that many women survivors mother within. It may also lead to improved interventions with domestically violent men that help them adopt violence-free partnering and parenting practices. As this research found, assaulting mothering is a deliberately deployed tactic used by domestically violent men, which is often overlooked and minimized when compared to more overt tactics such as the use of physical and sexual violence. It is telling to note that this specific type of degradation does not have an established name in the field of domestic and family violence, it is not well theorized, there are no specific tools to measure its existence and impact notwithstanding its prevalence and potential for harm. Equally important is the need to increase awareness of the myriad ways that mothering is assaulted in the public arena. A recent example of a public assault on mothering can be seen in the writing and public commentary of an Australian political candidate who opines that single mothers are “too lazy to attract and hold a mate.” Moreover, he argues that single motherhood is a “lifestyle choice” that “will result in a rapid rise in the portion of the population that is lazy and ugly” (Archibald, 2015, p. 3). Sexist attitudes and institutional practices in the public sphere can amplify the effects of this form of abuse, which is part of a web of abuse perpetrated by domestically violent men in the private sphere. Such institutional practices can increase women’s and children’s risk, further constrain their choices, and ultimately limit their sense of agency in relation to overcoming the impact of domestic violence.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Exploiting the ‘good mother’ as a tactic of coercive control

Abstract

Keywords

Literature Review

Exploiting the Good Mother as a Tactic of Coercive Control

Women’s and Children’s Accounts of Assaults on Mothering

Men’s Accounts of Domestic Violence

Method

Sources of Data

Participants

Data Collection

Data Analysis

Trustworthiness

Results

Men’s Use of Physical Violence and Nonphysical Abuse

Physical Assault During Pregnancy

Degrading Women as Mothers and Mothers’ Approach to Mothering

Making “Mad” and “Bad” Mothers

Attacking Women’s Sense of Competency

Teaching Children to Disrespect Mothers

Forcing “Tough Love” Approaches to Mothering

Men’s Accounts of the Impact on Women and Children

Discussion

Limitations

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

References