Young People’s Experience of Post-Separation Fathering Where the Father has been Violent to the Mother

<p>My intention in undertaking this research was to examine young people’s experiences of living with their father following parental separation where their father has been violent to their mother. To date there is little knowledge of children’s post-separation experiences of fathering or of the parenting abilities of partner abusive men. This study takes a feminist approach and is informed by scholarship on family issues, childhood studies and the sociology of the child. The study was guided by hermeneutic phenomenology and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Twenty young people aged 18 to 26 took part in the study and face to face interviews were carried out over a one year period. The findings revealed that some fathers were overly punitive in their parenting style with a number of fathers continuing to be physically and/or emotionally abusive to their children. Authoritarian or permissive parenting practices were also identified and a number of fathers were shown to be neglectful, making little effort to bond with their children or provide quality care. In cases where fathers were unable to accept the break-up and move on this was also shown to have an adverse effect on their ability to parent effectively including an inability to co-operate with children’s mothers. In contrast, the majority of mothers were shown to be central to children’s lives undertaking most of the caring responsibilities. Mothers also recognised children’s changing needs as they grew older, encouraged autonomy, and contributed to children’s social development and maturity by trusting their judgement. However, this was not necessarily a protective factor against difficulties that participants have experienced as young adults. A time-share or full-time arrangement was revealed as being the most problematic for children although weekend contact could also pose a risk where pre-separation violence towards children had been severe. The study concluded that a safe outcome for children will require a shift away from a father’s right to contact, emphasising instead children’s right to a life free from abuse.</p>

Young People’s Experience of Post-Separation Fathering Where the Father has been Violent to the Mother

<p>My intention in undertaking this research was to examine young people’s experiences of living with their father following parental separation where their father has been violent to their mother. To date there is little knowledge of children’s post-separation experiences of fathering or of the parenting abilities of partner abusive men. This study takes a feminist approach and is informed by scholarship on family issues, childhood studies and the sociology of the child. The study was guided by hermeneutic phenomenology and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Twenty young people aged 18 to 26 took part in the study and face to face interviews were carried out over a one year period. The findings revealed that some fathers were overly punitive in their parenting style with a number of fathers continuing to be physically and/or emotionally abusive to their children. Authoritarian or permissive parenting practices were also identified and a number of fathers were shown to be neglectful, making little effort to bond with their children or provide quality care. In cases where fathers were unable to accept the break-up and move on this was also shown to have an adverse effect on their ability to parent effectively including an inability to co-operate with children’s mothers. In contrast, the majority of mothers were shown to be central to children’s lives undertaking most of the caring responsibilities. Mothers also recognised children’s changing needs as they grew older, encouraged autonomy, and contributed to children’s social development and maturity by trusting their judgement. However, this was not necessarily a protective factor against difficulties that participants have experienced as young adults. A time-share or full-time arrangement was revealed as being the most problematic for children although weekend contact could also pose a risk where pre-separation violence towards children had been severe. The study concluded that a safe outcome for children will require a shift away from a father’s right to contact, emphasising instead children’s right to a life free from abuse.</p>

Good to Us Chillun

This chapter focuses on ex-slaves’ positive and negative assessments of their free fathers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. African American communities celebrated caretaking fathers who invested emotionally, provided materially, and made it possible for their children to gain an education. They criticized neglectful, abusive men. The records of formerly enslaved people speak to the importance of caretaking and an ideal of paternal duty that prioritized moral masculinity and selfless, family-centered leadership. Freedmen’s efforts to parent in the post-Civil War period have remained largely invisible. Because successful Black men became targets of violence, few openly displayed their caretaking.

Hidden Dramas of Masculinity: Women’s Perspectives on Intimate Violence in Different Social Classes

While intimate violence against women occurs in all social classes, few studies have examined this abuse in the context of both class privilege and class disadvantage. This research investigates the experiences of women from all social classes who were abused by intimate male partners. One key issue in this study concerns masculinities. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 60 women, what kinds of masculinity do abusive men present in public? How do these public masculinities contrast with the masculinities they embody in private? What are abusive men’s attitudes toward women in general? And finally, what similarities and differences do women report across social classes? Women reported that the different faces of masculinity men displayed helped to conceal the abuse and caused them to feel trapped in abusive relationships. This is interpreted in the context of masculinities and social class.

Beyond the Power and Control Wheel: how abusive men manipulate mobile phone technologies to facilitate coercive control

Mobile phone ownership has become almost universal, with smartphones the most popular consumer electronics device. While the role of technologies and digital media in the domestic abuse of women is gaining international attention, specific information regarding how mobile phones, and their various ‘apps’, may assist perpetrators in the coercive control of their current or former partners is still a relatively unexplored area in the research literature. This study with women survivors was able to identify that perpetrators use mobile phones in ways that go beyond the traditional tactics of abuse identified through the globally used feminist theorisation of the Power and Control Wheel (developed by the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Programme). The portability and diverse capabilities of mobile phones have been manipulated by abusive men to develop strategies of ‘agile technological surveillance’, which allow them to track and monitor their partners in various ways ‘on the go’ and irrespective of physical proximity. An adaptation of the Power and Control Wheel has been developed and licensed to account for these new opportunities for surveillance, manipulation and control. Proposals are made for integrating this revised framework into professional practice to inform the assessment and management of risk in abusive relationships.

How Do Men in Treatment for Intimate Partner Violence Experience Parenting their Young Child? A Descriptive Phenomenological Analysis

Men who use intimate partner violence (IPV) often have challenges as caregivers such as poor understanding of children’s needs and emotions. There is little knowledge regarding their everyday-life experiences of being a parent. We interviewed 14 men in therapy for intimate partner violence on how they experienced their relationship to one of their children (mean age 4,5 years). We performed a descriptive phenomenological analysis. Informants seldom explored their children’s experience. They found that their fathering was influenced by past relationships and negative expectations for the future. The informants’ bodily experience of emotional arousal was described as difficult to control and understand and was a limited source for meaning making in the father-child relationship. The experience of being a good father was connected to presence and control of the child’s behavior. Informants felt that what they experienced as good parenting lacked others’ recognition. Interventions for partner-abusive men should address their fathering and focus on fathers’ life-experience and context as influencing their fathering. Therapeutic interventions should strengthen partner-abusive fathers’ awareness of and meaning making from their emotional arousal. Where safety permits, dyadic interventions aiming at re-establishing the child’s experience of safety in the father-child relationship should be considered by therapy providers as a complement to established interventions with partner-abusive men.

Merging Efforts: The Intersections of Domestic Violence Intervention, Men, and Masculinities

Feminist-focused activism and domestic violence services have grown in tandem, both developing analysis of systemic interventions for abusive men and in men’s role to address violence against women. Research on men and masculinities create a space for enhancing the view of toxic and healthy masculinities; however, analysis of masculinities without specific discussion on topics of intersectionality can avoid directly addressing men's violent behavior. There is a growing need to combine two focal points of work: honoring the foundations of anti-oppression work by encouraging non-abusive men to address their entitlement and disconnect from women, and motivating domestically abusive and violent men to choose respectful behavior that integrates healthy masculinities. Consideration for LGBTQ+ analysis of masculinities and opportunities for combined work are also explored.