5 Ways That Domestic Violence and Coercive Control Victim-Survivor Moms Are Great Mothers

They make great efforts to look after their children's welfare and well-being

Dr Emma Katz is widely regarded as the world’s foremost academic expert in her area of study — how coercive control impacts on children and young people.

Emma specializes in the harms caused by father-perpetrated coercive control, as well as children’s and mothers’ resistance and recovery. Read more in her book Coercive Control in Mothers’ and Children’s Lives, published by Oxford University Press.

Welcome

In this post I’m going to talk about something that’s not talked about nearly often enough: the many ways that domestic violence and coercive control victim-survivor moms are great moms. Loving moms. Protective moms. Insightful moms. Highly skilled moms. Thoughtful moms. Healing moms. Moms that are the most valuable and important person in their child’s life.

This post is available for anyone to read, so please share it widely.

If you are keen to read this current post, perhaps you’ll also be interested in my popular post 10 Reasons Why a Coercively Controlling Man is an Unfit Father.

If you read these two posts together, you’ll see that it’s a myth that victims and perpetrators are “both toxic” or “both bad parents”. Instead, you’ll see that the parenting of perpetrators and victims-survivors tends to be as different as night and day. The victim-survivor is a better parent by far.

False beliefs about domestic violence and sexist attitudes prevent us from talking about the great parenting done by these moms

There are lots of reasons why we don’t talk enough about the great things that domestic violence and coercive control victim-survivor mothers do as parents.

These reasons include:

• In general, our sexist societies tend to have impossibly high standards for all mothers, and to be super-ready to criticize them.

• In general, women often internalize societies’ harsh attitudes towards mothers, and see their own mothering in a much more negative light than it deserves.

• More precisely in relation to domestic violence, societies’ understandings of domestic violence are usually wrong. Societies’ false beliefs tend to encourage victim-blaming rather than recognition of the victim’s positive qualities.

False beliefs versus the realities of what really happens in coercive control-based domestic violence

Sadly, there are many false beliefs about coercive control-based domestic violence (where the abuser wants to dominate and control). See my series of pieces on this site, which are devoted to Explaining Coercive Control to People Who Don’t Quite Get It.

Some of these incorrect popular views are that “it takes two to tango”, and that the victim somehow wants to be in this position — that the victim is “co-dependent” and is “choosing to stay”.

What really happens is this: A DV victim is an ordinary person who has the misfortune to meet a perpetrator. (There are a huge number of perpetrators around, so the odds of one coming into somebody’s life are high.) Any one of us could have the misfortune to meet a perpetrator, and any one of us could be targeted by a perpetrator.

What perpetrators are really like and the harm they cause

The perpetrator is highly predatory and manipulative. They use techniques of psychological torture; the same techniques that are used to psychologically break trained soldiers. You can read more about this in an earlier piece I wrote on this site on Why Domestic Violence and Abuse Victims and Survivors Deserve All Our Respect and Support.

Perpetrators take away victims’ choices by making life very difficult for the victim if the victim doesn’t do what the perpetrator wants. The perpetrator continually triggers self-blame and self-doubt in the victim, so the victim will worry that they are overreacting if they push back against what’s happening, and will hold themselves responsible for “fixing” things.

Perpetrators entrap their victims, making it extremely tough for their victim to escape them.

The ”relationship disguise”, and why it is so hard for victims to end the abuse

Even though all of this is entrapment, the perpetrator disguises it as love, romance and a partnership. The use of threatening and abusive behavior is blended together with seemingly “good times” and seemingly “kind” behavior.

The deception, coupled with the psychological torture tactics, makes it hard for the victim to see clearly what was going on. It is very understandable that it may take them some time to view things as they really are.

Even when the victim does see what’s going on, they don’t usually have the power to end the abuse completely. The victim can say “it’s over” to the perpetrator, but that doesn’t mean the perpetrator will stop abusing them. This is because the perpetrator will frequently continue to abuse the victim after separation — as I wrote about in another earlier piece on this site, Post-Separation Abuse and the Devastation It Causes

We should blame the perpetrator, never the victim

Taking the above into account, all the blame for what happens in these situations should fall on the perpetrator.

The perpetrator was the one keeping the abuse going. The perpetrator was the one with the power, because they were willing to break all codes of human decency and community by targeting another person with outrageously destructive behavior. They did this obsessively and relentlessly. They assaulted the victim’s human rights and turned their life into a war zone.

It therefore makes no sense to talk about victims “choosing” to stay in these relationships, or blaming victims for not saying “it’s over” sooner.

Instead we should be looking at:

• how the victim’s choices where badly limited;

• how they managed to survive the onslaught;

• how they coped as best as they could;

• how they tried really hard to make things better; and

• how they did the best they could in such terrible circumstances.

Victims-survivors as mothers: parenting in a situation of great hardship

As this post is about victims-survivors who are mothers, it’s important to understand how all this applies to their roles as mothers.

To be a loving and responsible parent is seriously hard work. It’s tough even for people who do it in the easiest possible circumstances, such as being surrounded by people who support them, and having plenty of money and resources to use as they wish.

Domestic violence and coercive control victims-survivors are being a parent at the hardest end of the spectrum. It is many dozens of times harder for them to parent than it is for women who parent in happy, safe circumstances.

Being able to be a good parent in any way at all in these circumstances is therefore a huge achievement.

Of course, not all parents subjected to domestic violence are good, kind, loving parents

I want to just pause here to note that not all parents who are subjected to domestic violence are good parents.

Domestic violence victims aren’t just one type of person. They can have very different personalities and very different social and political values that shape how they see the world and how they treat children.

Some people who happen to be DV victims have other issues in their lives, and these other issues stop them from being good parents. They wouldn’t be good parents even if they were in the best of circumstances, with no domestic violence in the picture at all.

If you were the child of a domestic violence victim who wasn’t a good parent, I want you to know that I see you and I’m so sorry you went through that. You deserved safe and loving parenting.

Interviewing victim-survivor mothers and their children in my research

There are so many examples of great parenting which, as an academic researcher, I have directly encountered in interviewing victim-survivor mothers and their children.

(The victim-survivor mothers I have interviewed have all been separated from the perpetrator, living in a different home to him.)

My discussions with these mothers were focused on:

• how perpetrators had affected their parenting;

• what being a mom in those circumstances was like; and

• how they had tried to protect and support their children.

What have I found out: Mothers’ efforts in parenting

The insights I have gained from interviewing mothers have been deeply moving and important.

One thing I realized was that these mothers were trying to look after their children as best as they could, and were determined and creative in their efforts to keep their children as safe and happy as they could.

Where they couldn’t keep the children safe or happy, or be the type of mother they wanted to be, this was because of the perpetrator’s abuse, not because of any failing by the mother.

Looking out for the children’s best interests was a full-time job for the victim-survivor moms I spoke with.

It wasn’t just about protecting the children during particularly severe moments of the perpetrator’s abuse, such as incidents where he got violent; it was about trying to protect them and maintain their wellbeing 24 hours a day.

5 areas where domestic violence and coercive control victim-survivor mothers do great

The insights I have gained as an academic researcher point to the enormous strengths of mothers in their parenting.

The mothers were doing the best they could within extremely limiting circumstances: They were doing the best they could with the knowledge and resources they had at the time, which is all anyone can ever do.

Their efforts to look after their children were positively heroic when they were going through so much themselves.

So, in what ways are domestic violence and coercive control victim-survivor moms great mothers?:

1. They are forced to mother in extremely adverse circumstances, yet still work very hard to give their children care and love;

2. They put their children’s interests first as much as they can in the circumstances;

3. They support their children to thrive;

4. They fight for their children’s well-being and safety post-separation; and

5. They try to make their children feel loved and supported.

Now, let’s go through each of these in turn.

1. Mothers are forced to parent in extremely adverse circumstances, yet still work very hard to give their children care and love

Domestic violence and coercive control victim-survivor mothers give their children love, care and attention as much as they can.

In one of my interviews, one mom told me about how her abuser wouldn’t let her play with her young daughter when he was at home. He would demand she do something else whenever he saw her trying to play with her daughter. But whenever he went out, she bravely seized the opportunity to play with her daughter.

Another mom told me how her husband would react extremely badly if she bought new clothes or shoes for their son. Rather than allow her son’s needs to go unmet, she bought him clothes and shoes anyway and hid them in the garden when she got home so she wouldn’t have to be seen coming through the front door with them. She got them back from the garden and snuck them into the house later when her husband wasn’t watching. This was a courageous course of action.

Some mothers said how the perpetrator’s abuse left them in such an emotionally numb, highly traumatized state that they were going through life in a robotic way, like they were on “autopilot”. It would have been easy for these mothers to give up caring for their children. Yet they held on by their fingertips, and kept doing the practical care for their children even though they couldn’t emotionally connect with them while this was happening.

These mothers kept their children as safe and well as they could, when circumstances (created by the perpetrator) were so badly against them.

2. Mothers put their children’s interests first as much as they can in the circumstances

One thing that is often held against mothers who are being subjected to domestic violence is that they weren’t putting their children first. However, this is usually not true. These moms ARE putting their children first, it’s just not as simple as people like to think.

The moms I spoke with described how they were always thinking about their children.

They tried to keep the perpetrator calm and appeased so that he wouldn’t flare up around the children or hurt the children. Keeping the perpetrator satisfied came at a huge personal cost, a cost that the moms paid in order to protect their children. This couldn’t be effective 100% of the time: It is a built-in feature of coercive control that perpetrators have to become frightening and rage-filled from time to time to remind their families of the terrible consequences of not obeying them. However, by sacrificing their own needs to keep the perpetrator calm, the mothers did save the children from upset and harm a lot of the time.

Where mothers did challenge perpetrators, this was often over issues surrounding the children’s safety and welfare. Challenging perpetrators from time to time about particular issues was also part of mothers’ processes of resisting perpetrators’ abuse, even if this sometimes made things temporarily worse. A mom’s attempts at resistance were ultimately about her building a path for herself to eventually escape.

Some mothers deliberately stayed with the perpetrator until their children reached their teens because they were terrified that the children would face worse abuse from their father post-separation. These mothers knew that it was highly likely that family courts would order their young children to spend unsupervised time with their abusive fathers — a well-justified fear, since this is exactly what family courts usually do.

The mothers believed that their young children may not make it through this unsupervised time without severe harm, so they stayed in a home with the abuser until the children were older to try to protect the children from this harm.

Some mothers stayed because the perpetrator and perhaps also their wider family and community had convinced them at the time that staying married to the perpetrator was better for the children than getting divorced. This might have been because of concerns about divorce being immoral or harmful to children, concerns about the children growing up without a father, or because the perpetrator had created a situation where he had far more economic resources than the mother with which to support the children.

Some mothers had been convinced that the perpetrator wasn’t dangerous or harmful to the children and was more of a plus than a minus in their lives until, one day, he did something that obviously harmed the children. This then changed these mothers’ understanding of the situation and caused her to start planning to escape the perpetrator with the children.

Overall, then, mothers in these circumstances ARE putting their children first in the ways that make sense to them at the time, which is an important part of being a great parent. Of course, the person who wasn’t putting the children first in any way, shape or form was the perpetrating father.

3. Mothers support their children to thrive

In my research study, the moms had done many different things to support their children to thrive. Mothers had a lot more free rein to do this when they had separated from the perpetrator and were living in a different home than him — even though being apart from the perpetrator didn’t necessarily equal an end to the abuse.

If their children had been harmed by the abuser, the moms proactively tried to help the children heal as best as they could.

Where the abusive father had caused the mom’s relationships with her children to become really strained and distant, moms kept trying to heal these relationships as much as they could. Sometimes circumstances made this very difficult, for example if the children had decided to stay living with the perpetrator. However, even then, the moms would have jumped at any viable opportunity to build a good relationship with their children.

If any suitable professional support was available to them to help with this process of healing, moms took up this help whenever possible. Indeed, survivor moms should have had access to a lot more free, accessible and suitable help. It was really unfair that so much of the work of healing the children and the mother-child relationships fell on the moms’ shoulders when they were victims too.

Moms tried to find the right words or behaviors to make their children feel safe. Where children were scared or distressed by post-separation abuse, moms did their best to shield the children and to comfort them.

Where children were struggling to understand the nature of what had happened in their family, moms strived to find age- and context-appropriate ways to give the children the answers they needed at the time. Some moms battled through their own pain and discomfort to answer the tough questions about the abuse that their children were asking of them. Some moms courageously held space for their children’s complex emotions about the abuse, so that their children could feel heard and know that their emotions and thoughts were valid.

Some moms did a fantastic job reassuring the children that the abuse hadn’t been their fault (children often blame themselves) and that there was nothing the children could have done to stop the abuse.

Some moms kept trying to help their children to stop behaving aggressively, even though this was a really hard process. As children got aggressive with their mom and siblings, moms kept trying to teach them how to regulate their emotions and to reinforce that being aggressive with family members was unacceptable. Some moms were really successful at this, and brought about good changes in children’s behavior over time. This led to the children being able to have safer and happier relationships at home. Where moms couldn’t make as much of an impact as they wanted to, this wasn’t for lack of trying.

Some moms proactively looked for ways of building up their children’s confidence and self-esteem. For example, they encouraged them to participate in hobbies such as arts and crafts, dance, or sports like soccer and rugby to give them opportunities to express themselves and release their emotions.

Moms also gave their children wise advice. For example, in the context of helping her son navigate tough social situations at school, a mom helped her son to realize that it’s okay if he doesn’t get things right all the time. This was important advice for a boy whose father was a coercive control perpetrator obsessed with always winning and always being right. The mom’s guidance helped her son to behave in a much more healthy way, and to turn away from the attitudes that his father had so poorly role-modeled.

4. Mothers fight for their children’s well-being and safety post-separation

Moms put their children’s best interests first when it came to trying to keep both themselves and their children safe from the perpetrator during the post-separation stage.

What this actually looked like depended very much on the situation.

In some cases, it meant trying to move heaven and earth to try to get the family courts to recognise the dangerousness of the situation and to protect frightened and distressed children from being forced into seeing their father. Even if the moms’ efforts were unsuccessful, they had tried as hard as they could.

In other cases, it meant allowing the children to see the father because the children were desperate to keep seeing him. This could involve moms patiently supporting the children to deal with the emotional upset that their father continued to cause in their lives. Some moms did this in the hope that seeing the father would offer the children more good than harm, or because they hoped that one day the children would be able to see the father’s abuse for themselves and choose for themselves to walk away from him.

In some cases it meant the moms pushing hard for their fair share of the family’s money and assets in the divorce so they could use these resources to support the children.

In other cases, it meant mothers not even attempting to get child support or a fair divorce, because doing so would risk a dangerous backlash from the perpetrator.

Whatever circumstances mothers faced, their children’s welfare tended to be a major factor in their post-separation actions. Meanwhile, by contrast, the abusive fathers tended to have zero ability or wish to make decisions in the post-separation period that would promote their children’s welfare.

5. Mothers try to make their children feel loved and supported

As I mentioned above, in my academic research I have interviewed not only mothers but also children. These children were victims-survivors in their own right.

One thing I was struck by was the great job that many of the moms had done in making these children feel loved and supported.

These children described to me how, over time, they had come to realize more and more how much their mom loved them, how solid their relationship with her was, and how they could rely on her to be there for them.

The children felt this way because the moms had been able to make their post-separation homes places of safety, fun and nurturance.

Children and mothers talked about how much they enjoyed doing fun things together, such as snuggling up together with chocolate and watching a movie together, or going out to the hairdressers’ together.

Some moms had helped children to feel safe by behaving in ways that showed children it was okay to make mistakes (for example, not getting angry when accidents happened around the home). This in turn had prompted children to ask moms to teach them new skills. For instance, after realizing he wouldn’t be yelled at for getting things wrong in his mom’s home, one son asked his mom to teach him how to make pastry.

Some moms had encouraged children to share their feelings with them. When children confided in mothers, it gave mothers the chance to respond with empathy and to offer praise and reassurance.

When mother-child relationships are not close after moms have separated from abusive fathers, it is often because the perpetrator is sabotaging the children’s relationship with their mother as part of his post-separation domestic abuse. I discussed this in my post on how CAMS is a preferable term for how perpetrator fathers intentionally sabotage the child-mother connection. In these cases, the fault for this lies entirely with the perpetrator. These moms would be able to show their children love and support if only societies would stop giving perpetrators every opportunity to get away with post-separation domestic abuse.

In cases where moms and children were lucky enough to have been able to get to a really healthy and happy place in their relationships with each other, the children I interviewed with said lovely things about their moms:

“She’s always there, and she’s kind and she helps.”

“Mum makes everything better. She’s always there for me; she would do everything in her power to help me.”

“Mum’s the parent I can rely on.”

These children’s warm feelings towards their mothers hadn’t just happened; they were the result of the enormous amount of work that these moms had put into promoting their children’s well-being, even during the toughest of times.

My book goes into more depth on victim-survivor mothers’ great parenting

For my full analysis of the experiences of domestic violence and coercive control victim-survivor moms, the best resource is my book, published by Oxford University Press, Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives.

Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives is available now from Amazon and from other book sellers. (The link for the Audiobook is here.)

If you have read the book and found it useful, please go to the book’s Amazon page and leave your own positive review!

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