Domestically Abusive Men Describe WHY They Criticize Women's Mothering

Abusers explain their reasons for exploiting what it means to be a good mother, in their own words

Welcome

This post is about how male perpetrators of coercive control exploit what it means to be a good mother.

I wanted to investigate important research in this area as a follow-up from a post I have already written: Domestically Violent Men Describe the Benefits of Abusing Women and Children: This is how abusers describe the advantages they get, in their own words

Like that earlier post, this current post is about how male abusers describe the advantages they get from causing harm, in their own words. As a subscriber to this blog, you are likely to want to know what is going on inside the minds of perpetrators of abuse – to what extent they are devious and calculating – and this is what we are about to investigate.

What is coercive control and how does it relate to this post?

Coercive control is all about a perpetrator trying to cut somebody down from a full human being to a broken shell. One of the key purposes of Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz is to shed light on the harmful strategies that perpetrators use to do this.

Bringing these strategies to light helps to raise awareness and understanding of the harms that these abusers cause. Please read more on coercive control on this site, and also follow me on my social media channels.

The purpose of this particular post is to explain why, in the case of mothers, their sense of themselves as a good mother is at the top of the perpetrator’s list of things to try to destroy.

This post will explain three things:

1. How perpetrators attack mothering and mother-child relationships on purpose

2. How one way they do this is by criticizing the mother as a “bad mother”

3. Why attacking a woman as a “bad mother” is particularly damaging, as it is an attack on her identity

In order to explore this last point, it is important to begin by explaining an important and crucial difference between motherhood and fatherhood in our cultures.

Being a good mother is seen as much the same thing as being a good woman — but it is not the same for men and fathering

Our culture tends to send out a very clear moral message when it comes to women and mothering. A good mother is a good woman, a bad mother is a bad woman. Motherhood is not just a skill; it is not seen as a valid possibility or option for a woman to be bad at mothering (or mothering-related tasks) in the same way as she might be bad at board games or bingo.

This is not the same as the relationship between men and fathering. There is something very different about the way men and fathers are seen — and it is this contrast that makes all the difference in understanding why domestically abusive men criticize women’s mothering.

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