Mother Abuse: A Matter of Youth Justice, Child Welfare or Domestic Violence?
| Date | 01 June 2010 |
| Author | Sadie Parr,Caroline Hunter,Judy Nixon |
| Published date | 01 June 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2010.00504.x |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 37, NUMBER 2, JUNE 2010
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 264±84
Mother Abuse: A Matter of Youth Justice, Child Welfare or
Domestic Violence?
Caroline Hunter,* Judy Nixon,** and Sadie Parr**
International evidence suggests that in advanced welfare states the
abuse of parents, most particularly mothers, by their (most frequently
male) adolescent children is increasingly prevalent. In the United
Kingdom, however, child-to-mother abuse remains one of the most
under-acknowledged and under-researched forms of family violence.
Although it is an issue shrouded in silence, stigma, and shame, the
authors' work in the youth justice sphere, focusing on interventions to
deal with anti-social behaviour, suggests that adolescent violence
toward mothers is a topical and prevalent issue. We identify different
ways of conceptualizing it in the policy realms of youth justice, child
welfare, and domestic violence. The behaviour of both child/young
person and mother is constructed in ways which inform the assignment
of blame and responsibility. The paper highlights the silence that
surrounds the issue in both the policy and wider academic spheres,
hiding the failure of service providers to respond to this very
destructive form of intimate interpersonal violence.
INTRODUCTION
The impetus for this paper emerged from an evaluation of Family Inter-
vention Projects (FIPs) for families made homeless or at risk of eviction due
to alleged anti-social behaviour, in which the three authors were involved.
1
264
ß2010 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2010 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
* York Law School, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD,
England
cmh516@york.ac.uk
** Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam
University, City Campus, Howard Street, Sheffield S1 1WB, England
j.nixon@shu.ac.uk s.parr@shu.ac.uk
1J.Nixon et al., ASB Intensive Family Support Projects: An evaluation of six
pioneering projects (2006); J. Nixon et al., The longer-term outcomes associated with
families who have worked with intensive family support projects (2008).
The study included in-depth repeat interviews with parents (mostly mothers)
referred to FIPs to ascertain their views on the allegations of anti-social
behaviour made against them and/or their children, their views about the
causes of the behaviour labelled anti-social, their support needs, and their
experiences of working with the FIPs. As the data collection progressed, we
were unsettled by the frequency with which single mothers, who are often
held culpable for the anti-social behaviour of their teenage children,
2
talked
about being victims of violent attacks and abuse by those children, what we
refer to here as `mother abuse'. This prompted us to think more deeply about
how this kind of interpersonal, familial violence is understood in the
academic literature, labelled in policy terms, and interpreted by practitioners.
The paper is exploratory and is intended as a discussion piece.
In order to open up the issue to further debate we have structured the
paper to reflect the progress of our thinking. Rather than starting with a
conventional review of the literature and policy context followed by a
discussion of empirical findings, the paper is divided into two sections. In the
first, we present our empirical data which we treat as a starting point for our
enquiry. We also point to additional supporting evidence which suggests that
the aggressive and violent behaviour of teenage children, mainly towards
their mothers, is a prevalent and pressing issue.
In the second section we reflect on the silence we encountered when we
looked for evidence of `mother abuse' within both the academic and policy
arenas in the United Kingdom. Given the apparent lack of understanding
about how mother abuse might be understood and appropriately responded
to, we examine how current United Kingdom legal codes and policy frame-
works might be employed as part of a formal response to this issue. More
specifically, we consider the different ways of conceptualizing and
understanding the impact and meaning of acts of violence perpetrated by
adolescent children on their mothers within the three broad and interrelated
legal domains of: criminal justice responses; family/domestic violence
responses; and child welfare responses. In each of these domains we track
how the behaviour of the child/young person and that of the parent[s] is
configured highlighting the way in which the various conceptualizations
serve to inform the assignment of blame and responsibility. In so doing, we
acknowledge that the emergence of policy responses to a social phenomenon
is a matter of if and how that phenomenon is constructed as a problem.
3
While legal measures may be a response to the social construction of
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2C.Hunter and J. Nixon, `Taking the blame and losing the home: women and anti-
social behaviour' (2001) 23 J. of Social Welfare and Family Law 395; C. Hunter and
J. Nixon, `Disciplining Women: Anti-Social Behaviour and the Governance of
Conduct' in Securing Respect: Behavioural expectations and anti-social behaviour in
the UK, ed. A. Millie (2009) 119.
3 See, for example, K. Jacobs et al., `Power, Discursive Space and Institutional
Practices in the Construction of Housing Problems' (2003) 18 Housing Studies 429.
ß2010 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2010 Cardiff University Law School
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