Gendered Discourses of Responsibility and Domestic Abuse Victim-Blame in the English Children’s Social Care System

Abstract

Purpose This paper foregrounds the experiences of mothers involved with England’s children’s social care system when experiencing domestic abuse. It reports on data from a survivor-led study on domestic violence and/or abuse (DVA), involving women victim-survivors and domestic abuse practitioners. It aimed to understand how dominant discourses governing child protection work with families in which there is a perpetrator of DVA, might be revised to shift a tendency to hold mothers (solely) responsible for the protection of children as well as for their partners’ abuse. Methods The study advances a discourse analysis of interview and focus group data, substantiating how children’s social care practices produce the routine responsibilisation of the non-abusing parent, usually the mother, with limited focus on the abusing parent, usually the father. Results The paper exposes the gendered discourses of mother-victim-blame and responsibility patterning children’s social care responses to domestic abuse, which together intensify adult and child victim-survivor material harm and hamper child protection work. Also in evidence are the enduring traumatic consequences of the court-ordered removal of children. Conclusion The paper has implications for policy and practice, asserting that shifting responsibility away from mothers requires the ongoing interrogation of normative understandings of gender relations and gender-role stereotypes as they manifest in families. Fathers’ accountability should be constructed on a structural as well as individual level, which in the case of DVA and the family, incorporates efforts to enable perpetrators of DVA to cultivate an individual sense of responsibility and accountability, as standard practice.

How the Current Management of Intimate Partner Violence Can Endanger Victimized Mothers and Their Children

“…Thus, in this context, the role of mothers as a protective factor for their children is not being supported or is even impeded. Furthermore, we also found, as described in the literature, that IPV and professional responses to IPV damaged some mother-child relationships, especially as a result of perpetrators'/fathers' manipulation post-separation (Katz, 2019;Radford & Hester, 2006;Thiara & Humphreys, 2017), and some led to traumatic placement decisions (Wild, 2022).…”

“…Finally, as reported elsewhere (Holt, 2016;Lapierre, 2008;Wild, 2022), another element that weighed heavily on the shoulders of some victimized mothers was that they were held responsible by institutions and professionals for the safety and well-being of their children, even though they were not the perpetrators of violence. Some social biases were probably at work here such as in Kelton et al's study (Kelton et al, 2020) where non-assaulting mothers were judged more harshly than non-assaulting fathers in assessing failure to protect children in relationships with IPV.…”

Health service use of infants involved in family justice care and supervision proceedings in Wales: a data linkage study

“…Characteristics of others within the households such as fathers or other carers could also be explored. Social norms dictate that mothers are mainly responsible for the care and protection of their children, meaning that there is a tendency of practitioners and researchers to focus on mothers [45]. However, understanding and challenging such stereotypes including those of gender and age are a crucial part of improving child protection [45].…”

“…Social norms dictate that mothers are mainly responsible for the care and protection of their children, meaning that there is a tendency of practitioners and researchers to focus on mothers [45]. However, understanding and challenging such stereotypes including those of gender and age are a crucial part of improving child protection [45]. Similarly, there are other demographic factors that may help describe the parental and infant environment such as ethnicity, asylum seeker status, and employment status.…”

“They Tarred Me with the Same Brush”: Navigating Stigma in the Context of Child Removal

“…The parenting surveillance that takes place in social service settings has been noted to disproportionally sanction marginalised mothers [ 24 ], where increased scrutiny and additional “protection” of their children is justified due to them being deemed “threatening” or “unruly” [ 25 ]. Within the construction of women as being primarily responsible for child welfare and safeguarding, reinforced by gendered discourses of parenting [ 26 ], the focus on victims of domestic abuse (i.e., the mother) rather than the perpetrator leads to mothers being viewed as “unprotective” [ 27 ]. The surveillance of victims of domestic abuse is thus justified by blaming them for “failure” to prevent the violence and being unable to protect their children from an abusive home [ 28 ].…”