A dichotomized picture of postseparation parents has emerged in family law that juxtaposes violent relationships with those that are “normal.” Domestic violence scholars and advocates have played a role in reproducing this picture in their quest to secure protection for women and children. Although sympathetic, we argue this construction generates a number of problems: in particular, it obscures the gender power dynamics in relationships where women have not experienced violence. Interviews with separated mothers in dispute over contact arrangements reveal that there are significant continuities in the gender power dynamics they experience, despite differences in their exposure to male partner violence.
AshcraftC. (2000). Naming knowledge: A language for constructing domestic violence and systematic gender inequity. Women and Language, 23, 3-10.
2.
BeebleM. L.BybeeD.SullivanC. M. (2007). Abusive men’s use of children to control their partners and ex-partners. European Psychologist, 12, 54-61.
3.
BoydS. B. (2003). Child custody, law and women’s work. Don Mills, Ontario, Canada: Oxford University Press.
4.
BoydS. B. (2004). Demonizing mothers: Fathers’ rights discourses in child custody law reform processes. Journal of Association for Research on Mothering, 6, 52-74.
5.
BoydS. B. (2006). Robbed of their families? Fathers’ rights discourse in Canadian parenting law reform processes. In CollierR.SheldonS. (Eds.), Fathers’ rights activism and law reform in comparative perspective (pp. 27-51). Oxford, UK: Hart.
6.
CheslerP. (1991). Mothers on trial: The custodial vulnerability of women. Feminism & Psychology, 1, 409-425.
7.
CollierR. (2001). A hard time to be a father? Reassessing the relationship between law, policy and family (practices). Journal of Law and Society, 28, 520-545.
8.
ColtraneS.HickmanN. (1992). The rhetoric of rights and needs: Moral discourse in the reform of child custody and child support laws. Social Problems, 39, 400-420.
9.
CooperD. (1994). Productive, relational and everywhere? Conceptualizing power and resistance within Foucauldian feminism. Sociology, 28, 435-454.
10.
CooperD. (1995). Power in struggle: Feminism, sexuality and the state. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
11.
DavisW. (2004). Gender bias, fathers’ rights, domestic violence and the Family Court. Butterworth’s Family Law Journal, 4, 299-312.
12.
DowdN. E. (2000). Redefining fatherhood. New York: New York University Press.
13.
ElizabethV. (2010). Turning mothers into villains: Gaps and silences in media accounts of custody abductions. Feminist Media Studies, 10, 51-67.
14.
ElizabethV.GaveyN.TolmieJ. (2010). Between a rock and hard place: Resident mothers talk about the moral dilemmas they face. Feminist Legal Studies, 18, 253-274.
15.
ErikssonM.HesterM. (2001). Violent men as good-enough fathers?Violence Against Women, 7, 779-798.
16.
FinemanM. (1988). Dominant discourse, professional language, and legal change in child custody decision making. Harvard Law Review, 101, 727-774.
17.
FloodM. (2004). Backlash: Angry men’s movements. In RossiS. E. (Ed.), The battle and backlash rage on: Why feminism cannot be obsolete (pp. 261-342). New York: XLibris.
18.
FloodM. (2010). Fathers’ rights and the defense of paternal authority in Australia. Violence Against Women, 16, 328-347.
19.
HandT.ChungD.PetersM. (2009). The use of information and communication technologies to coerce and control in domestic violence and following separation (Stakeholder Paper 6). Sydney, New South Wales: Australian Domestic & Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of New South Wales.
20.
HarrisonC. (2008). Implacably hostile or appropriately protective? Women managing child contact in the context of domestic violence. Violence Against Women, 14, 381-405.
21.
HesterM.RadfordJ. (1996). Contradictions and compromises: The impact of the Children Act on women and children’s safety. In HesterM.KellyL.RadfordJ. (Eds.), Women, violence and male power: Feminist activism, research and practice (pp. 81-98). Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
22.
HunnicuttG. (2009). Varieties of patriarchy and violence against women: Resurrecting “patriarchy” as a theoretical tool. Violence Against Women, 15, 553-573.
23.
HuntJ.RobertsC. (2004). Family policy briefing 3: Child contact with non-resident parents. Oxford, UK: Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Oxford.
KaspiewR. (2007). Empirical insights into parental attitudes and children’s interests in Family Court litigation. Sydney Law Review, 4, 131-162.
26.
KayeM.StubbsJ.TolmieJ. (2003). Domestic violence and child contact arrangements. Australian Journal of Family Law, 17, 93-133.
27.
MaloneyL.SmythB.WestonR.RichardsonN.QuL.GrayM. (2007). Allegations of family violence and child abuse in Family Law children’s proceedings. Melbourne, Victoria: Australian Institute of Family Studies.
28.
McInnesE. (2006). The attitudes of separated resident mothers in Australia to child-father contact. Adelaide: School of Education, University of South Australia.
29.
MorrisA. (2005). Naming maternal alienation. In PorterM.ShortP.O’ReillyA. (Eds.), Motherhood: Power and oppression (pp. 223-235). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Women’s Press.
30.
NealeB.SmartC. (1997). Experiments in parenthood. Sociology, 31, 201-219.
31.
NeusteinA.LesherM. (2005). From madness to mutiny: Why mothers are running from the Family Courts—and what can be done about it. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
32.
ReeceH. (2006). UK women’s groups’ child contact campaign: So long as it is safe. Child and Family Law Quarterly, 18, 538-561.
33.
RhoadesH. (2002). The “no contact mother”: Reconstructions of motherhood in the era of the “new father.”International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, 16, 71-94.
34.
SmartC. (1989). Power and the politics of child custody. In SmartC.SevenhuijsenS. (Eds.), Child custody and the politics of gender (pp. 1-26). London, UK: Routledge.
35.
SmartC. (1991). The legal and moral ordering of child custody. Journal of Law and Society, 18, 485-500.
36.
SmartC. (1995). Law, crime and sexuality: Essays in feminism. London, UK: Sage.
37.
SmartC. (1996). Deconstructing motherhood. In SilvaE. B. (Ed.), Good enough mothering? Feminist perspectives on lone motherhood (pp. 37-57). London, UK: Routledge.
38.
SmartC. (1997). Wishful thinking and harmful tinkering? Sociological reflections on family policy. Journal of Social Policy, 26, 301-321.
39.
SmartC. (2004). Equal shares: Rights for fathers or recognition for children?Critical Social Policy, 24, 484-503.
40.
SmartC.NealeB. (1999a). Family fragments?Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
41.
SmartC.NealeB. (1999b). “I hadn’t really thought about it”: New identities/new fatherhoods. In SeymourJ.BagguleyP. (Eds.), Relating intimacies: Power and resistance (pp. 118-141). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
42.
StandingK. (1999). Reasserting fathers’ rights: Parental responsibility and involvement in education and lone mother families in the UK. Feminist Legal Studies, 7, 33-46.
43.
StenhouseG. (2007). Comment: Fifty-fifty care: A note of caution. New Zealand Journal of Family Law, 5, 260-264.
44.
TolmieJ.ElizabethV.GaveyN. (2009). Raising questions about the importance of father contact within current family law practices. New Zealand Law Review, 4, 659-694.
45.
TolmieJ.ElizabethV.GaveyN. (2010). Is 50:50 shared care a desirable norm following family separation? Raising questions about current family law practices in New Zealand. New Zealand Universities Law Review, 24, 136-166.
46.
van KriekenR. (2005). The “best interests of the child” and parental separation: On the “civilising of parents.”Modern Law Review, 68, 25-48.
47.
VarcoeC.IrwinL. G. (2004). “If I killed you, I’d get the kids”: Women’s survival and protection work with child custody and access in the context of woman abuse. Qualitative Sociology, 27, 77-99.
48.
WallbankJ. (1998). Castigating mothers: The judicial response to “wilful” women in disputes over paternal contact in English law. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 20, 357-376.
WallbankJ. (2007). Getting tough on mothers: Regulating contact and residence. Feminist Legal Studies, 15, 189-222.
51.
WuestJ.Ford-GilboeM.Merritt-GrayM.LemireS. (2006). Using grounded theory to generate theoretical understanding of the effects of child custody policy on women’s health promotion in the context of intimate partner violence. Health Care for Women International, 27, 490-512.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
