Violent Fathers Research Articles

Managing Masculinity When Growing up With a Violent Father: A Qualitative Study of Boys' Experiences.

A limited qualitative literature explores children's lived experiences of violence; boys' relationships with perpetrator fathers remain largely unexplored. Drawing on interviews with 31 boys, this paper explores the accounts of their relationships with their perpetrator fathers, focusing particularly on the implications of boys' understanding of these relationships for their sense of burgeoning masculinity. Three themes are considered: in (a) relational ambiguity; (b) performing masculinities, managing violence; and (c) envisioning alternative futures and re-visioning the past. Our findings highlight the importance of interventions for boys that facilitate the expression of their often complex and ambivalent feelings and fears about their father's violence, and what it means for them and their future.

Chronicity of Violence Foretold: Toward an Integrated Theory of Intimate Partner Violence.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a worldwide social problem. The current study explores underlining mechanisms of phenomenon by tying together intergenerational transmission theory, socialization theory, and trauma theory. It learns from men how the father figure shaped by their childhood experiences has contributed to their violence, how the father's socialization to manhood has affected their intimate relations, and how they understand the effect of being exposed to the father's violence on their own intimate relationships and violence. Interviews with 25 Israeli men were analyzed thematically in the phenomenological approach. Thematic analysis revealed five themes describing men's experiences of their father's aggression and detachment; men's experience of their intimate relations; men's image of women; men's fear of being infected or conquered by their partners' emotionality; and an overarching theme describing the understanding that men and women are destined to live in an intractable conflict that only violence can end. The interviewees explained that when hardened detached men raised by violent fathers interact with an emotional woman, they experience painful feelings and are threatened by her emotionality; consequently, they will use violence against that threat to stop their pain. The findings support a multidimensional integrative perspective of IPV and call for a theoretical synthesis of these men's models of violence. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Dealing with discomfort: Affective dissonance in fathers’ narratives of violence

Researchers focusing on fathers’ violence and perpetrator programmes have expressed growing interest in the question of change. Yet, there has been little dialogue in relation to feminist affect theories on change. Drawing on the narratives of eight fathers in Iceland who had been violent against their female partner and/or children, we suggest that attending to comfort and discomfort is central to understanding violent fathers’ process of change. Inspired by feminist theories of affective dissonance, the analysis shows that, on the one hand, fathers avoided dealing with uncomfortable emotions, conversations, and situations in diverse ways, for example, by leaning on women's emotional labour. On the other hand, the fathers also attempted to deal with discomfort, and this was often as part of their decision to seek help, turn to self-reflection, or hold themselves accountable. By foregrounding discomfort in these narratives, this paper provides insights into the possibilities of and hindrances to fathers’ change from perpetrating domestic violence.

Just like his dad? Understanding the impact of childhood experiences of domestic violence on adolescents and young men who present with difficulties later

This article is based on the author’s clinical experience in working with both perpe-trators and victims. It uses clinical examples to explore the various ways domestic violence impacts on the development of young boys who later present with a variety of psychopathologies. It shows how, in the aftermath of domestic violence, young boys can be thrusted into the vacancies left by their violent fathers, trapped within an identity best described as being “just like his dad”. Without environmental changes that restore safety, benign experiences of aggression, boundaries, and intimacy, the boys who do not develop into being violent themselves do so by deploying various psychological solutions such as depression, perversion and becoming carers. This article discusses these different trajectories in the context of the trauma of domestic violence and then considers the implications for treatment.

Differential Intervention Outcomes Among Fathers Who Commit Domestic and Family Violence: The Influence of Parental Relationship Status

Abstract Background In Western contexts, the behavior of domestically violent men is largely addressed through legal sanctions and standardised men’s behavior change programs. When domestically violent fathers remain together or in contact with their families, safety is an ongoing concern. However, program evaluations have failed to provide clear evidence for their effectiveness in addressing family violence in relation to parenting status. Part of the problem in developing efficacious programs has been the challenge of targeting them to typologies or socio-cultural needs of participants. Purpose The Caring Dads (CD) program supports father-change through leveraging men’s motivation to be positive parents, promoting child-centred fathering and cessation of family abuse. The aim of this study was to investigate whether participating fathers improved their co-parenting interactions, family functioning and wellbeing, and considered father characteristics and relationship statuses that coincided with positive outcomes. Methods This mixed method Australian study investigating a CD pilot incorporated psychological measures and semi-structured interviews at pre-, post- and 10 months post-intervention. Participants were fathers who attended CD in South-East Queensland, 2017–2019, and their co-parents. Results All fathers experienced improvements in parenting and family functioning by post-intervention, with greatest improvements for partnered fathers’ families. Partnered fathers also experienced improved parental alliance, unlike most separated fathers, although results must be viewed with caution due to small sample size and attrition across the study duration. Conclusion This study provides early support for improvements in CD participants’ fathering, parental alliance, and family functioning, most substantially for partnered fathers, though findings should be further investigated with larger cohorts.

Caught in the crossfire abused mothers’ struggles to navigate the Swedish domestic violence shelter system

ABSTRACT In this article, I apply institutional ethnography and the ‘generous’ concept of work to explore the strategies that abused mothers use to navigate the Swedish domestic violence shelter system. The article is based on qualitative interviews with eight women who have stayed in domestic violence shelters with their children. The analysis shows that the mothers enter a contradictory and gendered system in which their parenting skills are scrutinized and questioned, and demands for father-child contact coexist with demands to protect the children from their violent father. To navigate these institutional practices, mothers maintained a facade in front of the social services and shelter staff, sought allies within the system and tried to facilitate father-child contact without compromising the safety of their children. Mothers also spent a considerable amount of time trying to mobilize the system to help their children.

Ticking the boxes: fathers’ performativity, change and intimate partner violence

ABSTRACT Increasingly, perpetrator programmes that specialize in working with fathers who have been violent towards their partners aim both to improve parenting skills and to challenge and change men’s abusive behaviour. The context of the cultural discourses around fatherhood against which programmes are delivered have however received little recognition. We contribute to this conversation by exploring how eight fathers in Iceland approach fatherhood in their process of changing violent behaviour. Inspired by feminist post structural theories, the analysis shows that fatherhood could be performative at times. Fathers tried to perform fatherhood in line with dominant discourses of gender equal and involved fatherhood to assert their identities as good and respectable men and avoid shame. However, this performance did not necessarily engage with or show understanding of their children’s perspectives. When these fathers did engage in uncomfortable conversations with their children it had potential to move them towards change through critical reflections on their violent behaviour and ongoing power differences. This paper provides insights into possibilities of and obstacles to change for violent fathers that may prove useful for perpetrator programmes that intersect work on men‘s intimate partner violence with addressing their fathering skills and capacity.

Of Good Mothers and Violent Fathers: Negotiating Child Protection Interventions in Abusive Relationships.

This article examines the efficacy of a supportive housing program aiming to provide mothers in violent relationships with the practical resources to minimize child protection intervention. Drawing on qualitative interviews with program mothers, child safety officers, and program practitioners, we explore the extent to which the program enabled mothers and children to live free from fathers' violence and disengage from the child protection system. We find that, although valuable, the program did not fully mitigate the risks posed by violent fathers. We therefore argue that responsibility must be shifted onto violent fathers to change their behavior and build their parenting capacities.

Conversations about violence, risk and responsibility with divorced and support‐seeking fathers in Sweden

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to analyse approaches to issues of risk, responsibility and representations of violence in women social workers' conversations with alleged or confirmed violent fathers. The study adds to a growing body of research on agencies' handling of intimate partner violence (IPV) in the context of separation. Empirically, the study draws from 12 structured, audio recorded and transcribed interviews with support‐seeking and divorced fathers, from five municipalities in Sweden, conducted as part of a cooperation project in which a risk‐detection method (Family Law Detection Of Overall Risk Screen [FL‐DOORS]) was also tested. The results suggest a tension between different professional tasks. To validate information on IPV, detect risk and enhance a child perspective competes with other professional projects, most obviously with promoting cooperation between parents. The study confirms previous research, which demonstrates unique challenges facing women social workers and counsellors when working with men as perpetrators. In conclusion, the paper concurs with the call for a focus on responsibility and on safe parenting in professional conversations with allegedly or confirmed abusive fathers.

The French Reception of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Belated Consecration

The French Reception of <i>Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i>: A Belated Consecration

The eroticisation of gaze in the psychoanalytic treatment of a paedophile

In this article I discuss the clinical case of a patient whose main symptoms included paedophiliac perversions and an obsessive sexual interest in filming and watching himself whilst performing masturbatory sex in front of a webcam, something that I have come to refer to as “self-voyeurism”. Whereas voyeurism has been widely explored in psychoanalytic literature, to the best of my knowledge the psychological meaning of “self-voyeurism” has not. Based on the relational history of my patient, I will discuss that the “self-voyeurism” was an eroticisation of attachment trauma, specifically the experience of an absent mother’s gaze which constellated a threatening infanticidal presence, along with a way to cope with his subsequent traumata, including sexual and physical abuse at the hands of a violent father. I believe that this perverse symptomatology was both a defence structure against attachment and a powerful way of communicating his wish for closeness and intimacy.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning in Health Care

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related technologies are widely used in business and community, and are integrated into health care. This technology has the potential to transform many aspects of patient care, as well as management functions within providers, payers, and pharmaceutical companies. A growing number of research shows that artificial intelligence (AI) can work better or better than humans in important health care tasks such as diagnostics. As machine learning (ML) models become more common in our daily lives, concerns about their potential for injury are growing. In medicine, optimism in the human-health function of ML is influenced by ethical concerns about the potential of tools to magnify existing health disparities. Recent research, for example, has found that when applied to women, minority races, and ethnic groups, as well as those with social insurance, modern clinical prediction algorithms do well. When popular language language models are trained in science textbooks, they complete the templates of clinical notes to compliment hospitals for violent white fathers, according to other studies. Conclusion: While in-depth learning as a means of analysis and modeling has some advantages at the moment, it also highlights a major trend: the integration of health sciences with data. Obstacles to access to health care will be higher than many other industries, where billions of people use in-depth learning and other forms of electronic learning software every day.

How domestically violent Fathers impact children’s social-emotional development: Fathers’ psychological functioning, parenting, and coparenting

BackgroundMost children exposed to father-perpetrated domestic violence (DV) continue to have contact or live with fathers, yet there is little research on the impact of fathering in the context of domestic violence. ObjectiveThis paper aimed to identify pathways from children’s exposure to father-perpetrated DV to compromised social-emotional outcomes. Based on extant literature on fathering and domestic violence, psychological, parenting, and coparenting features in DV fathers were identified as potential mediators of the relationship between child exposure to DV and their social-emotional outcomes. Participants and SettingParticipants were 123 fathers with confirmed histories of DV perpetration and 101 comparison fathers without such histories. MethodsFathers completed self-report measures during two assessment sessions held at the university. Simple mediation analyses were used to examine pathways between fathers’ DV perpetration and child internalizing and externalizing difficulties through potential mediators. ResultsPaternal depression, hostility, and coparenting difficulties significantly mediated the relationship between child exposure to DV and child internalizing and externalizing difficulties. Low paternal warmth was associated with child externalizing difficulties but did not function as a mediator. Paternal over-reactivity and laxness, in contrast, were not significantly correlated with DV perpetration or with child internalizing or externalizing outcomes. ConclusionsThis study suggests that fathers’ emotion regulation and coparenting difficulties are important correlates of his DV perpetration and of their children’s psychological symptoms and should be considered as potential foci for parenting intervention with this population.

Recruiting Domestically Violent Fathers and Families for Research: What Does It Take?

ABSTRACT Empirical literature on strategies to effectively recruit participants for research is sparse, especially within the domestic violence domain. Evaluating recruitment methodology alongside researcher effort, time, and costs provides realistic guidelines for research planning. This study examined recruitment of fathers with and without a history of domestic violence perpetration into longitudinal research. Data were collected on 196 fathers we attempted to recruit for Time 1 assessment and 151 fathers we attempted to retain for Time 2 assessment over an eight-month timeframe. Results indicated that domestically violent fathers required similar efforts to recruit initially but required more effort for follow-up and that recruitment for father-child and mother assessments with this group was particularly challenging. Tests of two specific recruitment strategies demonstrate advantages of in-person and immediate scheduling of research appointments. Descriptive information is provided on the time and resources required for recruiting high-risk fathers into research and recommendations for conducting future research with this population are provided.

Every Missing Piece by Melanie Conklin

Reviewed by: Every Missing Piece by Melanie Conklin Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Conklin, Melanie Every Missing Piece. Little, 2020 [288p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-368-04895-8 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-368-06393-7 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-6 Six months after Billy Holcomb goes missing, eleven-year-old Maddy suspects he’s the boy she finds living in an old trailer with a cranky, overprotective woman. Maddy’s not entirely sure who she should tell, though; she’s already exhausted both her mother’s and the local sheriff’s patience by calling the police with any seemingly shady activity. Eventually, though, Billy needs more protection than Maddy can offer, and she and her family must figure out a way to shield the boy and his mother from his violent father. The climactic scene—a confrontation between Maddy’s stepdad and Billy’s gun-wielding father—is a sudden escalation in tone, but it’s also a depressingly realistic portrayal of how drastically domestic violence can amp up in a moment’s notice. Billy’s identity is confirmed midway, so the story becomes more about the unpredictable dangers of the world and the efforts of Maddy, who lost her father suddenly three years ago, to deal with the fact that tragedy can strike any time even to good and careful people. The storyline following Maddy’s [End Page 392] hesitant relationship with her stepfather underscores her distrust of any emotional connection after her dad’s death (“It seemed to me that love was just as likely to break a person in half as it was to save them”), and even a mostly happy ending still reminds readers that there’s inescapable vulnerability in loving someone. Fans of Rebecca Stead and Erin Entrada Kelly will appreciate the author’s compassion for kids navigating the dynamics of an uncertain world. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Young Adult Women's Perceptions of Their Maritally Violent Fathers

ObjectiveTo qualitatively examine fathering and father–child relationships from the perspective of young adult women who grew up with maritally violent fathers.BackgroundMaritally violent men are consistently described as volatile, unresponsive, self‐centered, and often abusive. Yet domestic violence (DV) perpetrators are not homogenous, suggesting that maritally violent fathers may not be homogenous either. The revised tripartite model of father involvement and Johnson's typology of DV were applied to better understand how maritally violent men father.MethodA theoretical thematic analysis was conducted based on interview data from a volunteer sample of 23 young adult women who were exposed to father‐perpetrated marital violence during childhood and adolescence.ResultsFindings were consistent with the small body of literature on fathering by maritally violent men, suggesting that these men as fathers are generally volatile, lack warmth and responsiveness, are disengaged, and sometimes are controlling and abusive. Nevertheless, dissimilarities in fathering and father–child relationships over time were identified such that participants categorized into coercive controlling violence exposure reported uniformly negative fathering experiences, whereas greater variability existed within the situational couple violence groups' recollections of their fathers over time.ImplicationsFindings suggest that practitioners should take into consideration the context in which DV occurs when working with maritally violent men as fathers, while erring on the side of caution and safety for victimized women and their children.

Fathers’ Perspectives Regarding Their Children’s Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence

ABSTRACTChildren exposed to intimate partner violence are at high risk for mental health and behavioral problems. Numerous studies have examined mothers’ perceptions about the influence of exposure to violence on their children; few studies have examined the views of violent fathers. This study sought to identify how fathers, participating in batterer intervention programs (BIP), perceive consequences of their violence on their children and how they protect and mitigate the destructive effects of their violence on their children. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 fathers, with a qualitative approach for analysis. The findings highlight the need for specific intervention for fathers.

Fathers' Rights in Swedish Family Law Reform: Taking Account of Fathers' Violence against Mothers

A strong assumption in Swedish family law that shared parenting and parental cooperation post-separation or divorce are preferred creates, as in many other jurisdictions, problems for mothers who try to protect themselves and their children from violent fathers. Changes in law during the last decade have, however, weakened the assumption that joint custody and extensive contact with violent fathers are the normal legal outcomes. This article analyzes how fathers' rights discourses since 2006 have been visible in, and influenced by, Swedish law reform processes on child custody and related issues, taking particular account of the context of fathers' violence against mothers. In the analysis, fathers' violence against mothers is situated within a Swedish gender equality context, and four domains of law and policy that are related to fathers' violence against mothers are delineated as an analytical framework in order to understand the dynamics of fathers' rights discourses in relation to the law reforms. The study shows that fathers' rights groups have been active and that their discourses are visible in the legislative documents but that the space for fathers' rights discourses has been somewhat restricted in law reforms since 2006. However, the author argues that the four law and policy domains seem to lack the ability to counteract fathers' rights discourses regarding economic issues. Moreover, discourses on children's rights, interests, protection, and well-being that are present within all domains have been more influential on the outcomes of the reforms than gendered discourses on fathers' violence against mothers. Even though gendered discourses on violence seem to have played a role in counteracting fathers' rights discourses, gendered discourses have struggled at the same time to influence several domains related to fathers' violence against mothers.

“A harp in the hallway”: Edna O'Brien and Jewish-Irish Whiteness in &lt;em&gt;Zuckerman Unbound&lt;/em&gt;

On 19th of March, 2013, Irish author Edna stepped onto stage of Newark Library auditorium and gave a stirring introduction to her long-time friend, Philip Roth: Feared and revered, plagiarized, envied, hermit and jester, lover and hater, foolish but formidable, too adorable for words, a very great friend, and undoubtedly, one of Yeats's Olympians (Roth@80). Her at Roth's eightieth birthday and de facto retirement celebrations served to underscore her curious absence from Roth scholarship. Though Roth has interviewed O'Brien, prefaced her work, and quoted her in epigraph, she rarely appears in Roth criticism.1 Yet where she is mentioned she provides stimulating perspectives on Roth's oeuvre, as, for example, when Debra Shostak cites epigraph to The Dying Animal (2001)-The body contains life story just as much as brain-as proof of Roth's continued preoccupation with how self comes into consciousness of itself within and through its fleshly habitation (60). Likewise, Darren Hughes astutely notes that in his 1984 interview with O'Brien, Roth could be conducting another of his self-interviews (267). This recalls David Gooblar's contention that presence of Franz Kafka and Anne Frank in Roth's fiction [often] tells us more about Roth himself than about those ostensible subjects (59). Roth's speaking of and to other writers can thus be read as a displaced commentary on himself. An important corollary to this insight can be extrapolated from when Roth writes of another cultural group, he is also writing about American Jews. These suppositions frame this paper and its consideration of of in Roth's fiction.Though by no means as immediately tangible as that of Frank and Kafka, O'Brien's in Roth's work was revealed at Roth@80, when she teasingly proposed herself as a likely model for Caesara O'Shea in Zuckerman Unbound (1981). Just as Zuckerman shares significant biographical data with Roth, Caesara does so with O'Brien. As Roth summarizes, was born in isolated reaches of Ireland, raised on a lonely farm in shadow of a violent father and educated by nuns behind latched gate of a provincial convent (A Conversation with Edna O'Brien 42). Caesara grows up in an identical milieu, rural confines of Connemara, under a father who drank whiskey and beat her mother (190). More significantly, both Caesara and share with one another (and with Zuckerman and Roth as well) experience of being ostracized from their communities as a result of their vocations.2 Caesara thus in many ways offers an Irish female counterlife for Zuckerman, as might be said to do for Roth. Just as Roth employs Kafka and Frank to delve into parallels between Jewish experience in Europe and America, he engages to examine equivalences between Jewish and Irish cultural identity. In doing so, Roth uses example of Irish as a warning to Jewish Americans against blindly supporting a mythologizing nationalism abroad and falling into an unaware ethnic whiteness at home. Brett Ashley Kaplan has already explored how Race figures in Zuckerman Unbound in ways that echo tension between identification and anxiety, looking specifically at blackJewish interrelations in America (45). Meanwhile, Scott W. Klein unearths traces of James Joyce in 1980s Zuckerman books that highlight Roth's use of Irish modernist writer to investigate national difference (154). Building on these foundations, this essay adds another layer of interpretation to Zuckerman Unbound's complex analysis of race by focusing on its representation of Irishness-and specifically on Caesara, the very heart of Ireland (187).Caesara is introduced to reader through a letter she has left for Zuckerman: I was so sad to leave without saying goodbye. But when Fate changes horse rider is carried along [. . .] Vague memories, nothing but memories (186). …

‘Like Gold Dust These Days’: Domestic Violence Fact-Finding Hearings in Child Contact Cases

Fact-finding hearings may be held to determine disputed allegations of domestic violence in child contact cases in England and Wales, and can play a vital role for mothers seeking protection and autonomy from violent fathers. Drawing on the author’s empirical study, this article examines the implications for the holding of fact-finding hearings of judges’ and professionals’ understandings of domestic violence and the extent to which they perceive it to be relevant to contact. While more judges and professionals are developing their understanding of domestic violence, the ambit of when and how it is considered relevant to contact has grown increasingly narrow, which suggests that many disputed allegations of domestic violence are disregarded and women and children continue to be put at risk from violent fathers. This bifurcated approach is likely to have significant implications for recent developments in this area of family law which are considered in this article.