This article looks at the characteristics of men who batter and identifies ways in which these characteristics also influence their ability to parent appropriately.
Batterers often tend toward authoritarian, neglectful, and verbally abusive child-rearing. Other characteristics that can have an important impact on children include manipulativeness, denial and minimization of the abuse, and resistance to change.
The effects on the children may be intensified by the trauma of witnessing physical assaults against their mother, and the tension produced by living with a high level of conflict between their parents.
One of the areas of life heavily controlled by many men who batter is the mother's parenting. An abuser may cause or forbid his partner to terminate a pregnancy, overrule her parenting decisions, or assault her when he is angry over the children's behavior.
Battered women are far more likely than other mothers to feel that they have to alter their parenting styles when their partners are present.
A man who batters considers himself entitled to a special status within the family, with the right to use violence when he deems it necessary. He may become irate or violent when he feels that his partner is paying more attention to the children than to him.
It's difficult for children to have their needs met in such an atmosphere. They can also feel they have to take care of the battering parent.
Men who batter often perceive their partners as owned objects. This attitude sometimes extends to their children, partly accounting for the dramatically elevated rates of physical and sexual abuse of children. They also seek custody of the children more often than non-battering fathers do.
Boys who are exposed to domestic violence tend to batter their own partners as adolescents or adults. This is due more to learned attitudes and behaviors than the emotional trauma of being exposed to abuse.
Daughters of battered women show increased difficulty in escaping partner abuse in their adult relationships.
Both boys and girls learn to accept various aspects of the batterer's belief-system, including that victims are to be blamed, women exaggerate their abuse, and males are superior to females.
Domestic violence undermines a mother's authority because the batterer's verbal abuse and violence provide a model for children of contemptuous and aggressive behavior toward their mother. Children have increased rates of violence and disobedience toward their mothers.
Some battered mothers report they are/were prevented from picking up a crying infant or helping a frightened child. They are also stopped from providing other basic physical, emotional, or even medical care. The children may feel that their mother does not care about them or is unreliable.
The batterer may reinforce those feelings by verbally conditioning the children through statements such as, "Your mother doesn't love you" or "Mommy only cares about herself."
The abusive parent may assault or intimidate the mother if she attempts to prevent him from mistreating the children. He may harm the children more seriously to punish her for standing up for them.
The mother may be forced over time to stop intervening on her children's behalf. This can lead children to believe she doesn't care about the batterer's mistreatment of them. Child protective services may label her behavior as "failing to protect."
Some batterers use favoritism to build a special relationship with one child in the family. The favored child is often a boy, and the batterer may bond with him by encouraging a sense of superiority to females.
Batterers also may create or feed existing familial tensions. These manipulative behaviors contribute to the high rate of inter-sibling conflict and violence.
Many abusers use children as a vehicle to harm or control the mother. Abusers may destroy the children's belongings to punish her, require the children to monitor and report on their mother's activities, or threaten to kidnap or gain custody if the mother attempts to end the relationship.
Post-separation, many batterers use unsupervised visitation as an opportunity to further abuse the mother through the children.
This material is a summary of the article "The Batterer as a Parent" by Lundy Bancroft in Synergy (Newsletter of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Winter 2002). We encourage you to read the entire article.
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Batterers, custody & visitation
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The Batterer as Parent: Addressing the Impact of Domestic Violence on Family Dynamics by Lundy Bancfroft & Jay Silverman