Barriers and Supports to Divorce for Victimised British-Indian Mothers and Consequences of Divorce: Narratives of British-Indian Adult Children of Divorce

Abstract

Divorce or separation is one route towards addressing high conflict in marriages and may be a key route out of situations of significant domestic violence for women and children. However, divorce has been associated with feminisation of poverty and other negative outcomes which can be further exacerbated for victimised women. While there has been research as to what prevents women from leaving violent marriages, there is little research on what prompts women to leave and separate or divorce. This literature is particularly limited for minority ethnic women, for whom both the contexts of domestic violence and divorce may be additionally complex due to the superimposition of several oppressive structures such as race, patriarchy, gender and immigration that render them particularly vulnerable and limit their help-seeking approaches. However, victimised minority ethnic women do make strategic choices to seek help in domestic violence situations and even to divorce. This paper address this gap in literature by presenting a study that explores the narratives of British-Indian adult children who experienced and witnessed parental domestic violence and parental divorce. The paper presents the perspectives of these children to highlight the context, barriers and supports that participants believed their mothers had to address domestic violence and to divorce, the decisions their mothers made and the consequences of these decisions. The analysis suggests that barriers and supports towards help-seeking for domestic violence and to divorce and the consequences of divorce are embedded in the community contexts for Dr Chaitali Das is a lecturer in Social Work in the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland. Trained as a social worker in India, she has experience of working with vulnerable children including child labourers, street children and children in prostitution. Her interest includes working on processes of exclusion and 'minoritisation', particularly minority ethnic groups. Correspondence to:British-Indian women. The implications towards informing appropriate support to victimised and divorced women within their communities are discussed.

Out of Touch: <i>Understanding Post-divorce Relationships between Children and Fathers in Ethnic Minority Families</i>

“…Both children and their mothers often spoke of men having shown little care for children while the parents lived together-a lack of engagement also contributing to such fathers having fragile post-divorce relationships with their children. That divorce in ethnic minority families not uncommonly includes prior experience with domestic violence aligns with studies of Indian families in the UK (Das 2012), Turkish and Iranian families in Sweden (Akpinar 2003;Darvishpour 1999) and other studies (Hyman, Guruge & Mason 2008;Sinha 1998).…”

“…My little brother jumped up and hung on to the social worker, and they could see it wasn't so great, so they threw out my father and tried to comfort us. They wanted to know why we reacted like that… I kept repeating that I was afraid and that [ Whilst amongst the harsher experiences in our material, this experience of prolonged dominance and violence preceding divorce is also documented elsewhere (Das 2012;Guru 2009;Guruge et al 2010). In fact, according to Danish police statistics, ethnic minority women file more than twice as many complaints of spousal abuse per capita as do majority Danish women (Helweg-Larsen 2012: 47).…”

Perspectives on delivering safe and equitable trauma-focused intimate partner violence interventions via virtual means: A qualitative study during COVID-19 pandemic

“…For these women, the decision to seek or access help is also influenced by several intersecting factors. These include: (i) cultural norms and patriarchal ideologies which "stigmatize, blame and shame women from exposing IPV or seeking help" [30]; (ii) structural barriers, such as the ambiguity of the criminal justice process, racist interactions with the police and court system, spousal sponsorship policies, legal status, and fear of deportation [16]; and (iii) culturally insensitive care within the healthcare system and mainstream social services [28,29]. Women with disabilities also face physical and structural barriers to help seeking which include impaired mobility, complete dependency on the perpetrator, and lack of accessible services [31].…”

The Influence of Patriarchal Culture, Motivation and Image on Women's Political Participation in the Regional Representatives Council of North Sulawesi Province

“…Violence against women can take forms such as domination and control, intimidation, pressure and threats (Ashcraft, 2000). Patriarchy is a social structure that suppresses and makes victims of domestic violence vulnerable (Das, 2012). This underlies the risk of women experiencing domestic violence.…”