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The Mothering Perceptions of Women Abused by Their Partner

Einat Peled and Inbal Barak Gil Violence Against Women 2011 17: 457 originally published online 8 April 2011 DOI: 10.1177/1077801211404676 The online version of this article can be found at: http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/17/4/457

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VAW17410.1177/1077801211404676Peled and GilViolence Against Women

Article

The Mothering Perceptions of Women Abused by Their Partner

Einat Peled1 and Inbal Barak Gil2

Violence Against Women 479 17(4) 457 The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1077801211404676 http://vaw.sagepub.com

Abstract This study examined how abused women perceived their mothering. Findings reveal the womens continuous struggle to function as good mothers in the face of the violence. Their main struggleto create a buffer between the childrens world and the violent worldwas directed at preventing the abuse from affecting their functioning as mothers, restraining and fixing their partners violence, and shielding their children from it. Although the women felt that they have succeeded in this task, they also referred to their childrens exposure to violence. The discussion centers on the split evident in the womens narratives between their mothering and their experience of violence. Keywords abused women as mothers, domestic violence, mothering perceptions

Introduction
This study examined how women who were abused by their partner perceived their mothering. Mothering perceptions are affected by social concepts and constructions of mothering (the practice and experience) and motherhood (the social role and institution) whose origins lie, inter alia, in religious-cultural traditions, in scientific and professional perceptions, and, of course, in various layers in the womens life stories.

The Social Construction of Motherhood

Throughout history and in most societies, women were seen as responsible for raising their children and for providing for all their needs. In Western societies, this social mandate is
1 2

Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel Israeli Defense Force

Corresponding Author: Einat Peled, Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel Email: einatp@post.tau.ac.il

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underpinned by social constructions of the image of the good mothera woman totally devoted to her children, with an instinctive ability and desire to give, to care for, and to sacrifice, for which the birth of a child is the ultimate self-fulfillment (Douglas & Michaels, 2004; Hays, 1996). These notions found further support in early psychoanalytic theories that stress the mothers dominant role in a childs proper development (Birns & Ben-ner, 1988). Freud (1905, 1926, 1940), for example, saw in the mothers relationship with her infant child the critical foundation for the childs lifelong psychological and interpersonal development. Later theories of object relationships and ego psychology (e.g., Bowlby, 1980; Klein, 1932) heightened the importance of the childs initial relationship with his or her mother as the basis for the development of secure attachments with others. This is true also for Winnicott (1992), who coined the expressions the good enough mother and the ordinary devoted mother, and for Stern (1995) who acknowledged the process of becoming a mother. Though they have toned down the idealist expectations of the mother and recognized the negative feelings mothers can feel toward their children, they too perceived mothering as a natural and essentially positive process that is rooted in the womans psychophysiological constitution (Palgi-Hecker, 2003). Psychodynamic feminist writers (e.g., Benjamin, 1988; Chodorow, 1978; Gilligan, 1982) continue to emphasize the central and unique role of intimate relationships in the lives of women in general and in mothers in particular but examine how they are shaped also by psychological and social processes of gender identity. Feminist critics of prevalent cultural and psychodynamic notions suggest they treat mothers as a voiceless object whose purpose is to provide for the childs needs, rather than a person in her own right, and call for shifting social and professional attention to mothers subjective experiences and viewpoints (Hays, 1996; Rich, 1976; Thurer, 1994). Both liberal and radical feminist writers have shown how social constructions of ideal motherhood cater to the needs of a patriarchal society to the exclusion of alternative views and serve as a means for controlling, restricting, and isolating women within their homes (Braverman, 1989; DiQuinzio, 1999; Hays, 1996; Rich, 1976). Furthermore, there has been a growing feminist call in recent decades to voice and sharpen the distinctions among maternal narratives grounded in varied life experiences and social-cultural origins, including those of struggle, disadvantage, and distress (Middleton, 2006). Despite the significant impact of feminist thought and practice, western social perceptions of mothering are still considerably influenced by the motherhood myth and expect mothers to bear most of the responsibility for the physical and psychological care of children (Douglas & Michaels, 2004; Warner, 2005). The same is true of Jewish Israeli society where this study was carried out, which stresses the importance of the family and of the mothers central role in making a home and in caring for the children (Fogel-Bijaoui, 1999; Raz, 2000; Tamir, 2007). The tendency to idealize motherhood may create a gulf between social and personal perceptions of desired mothering and the reality of the mothering experience, which in turn may lead to feelings such as anxiety, frustration and guilt, low self-esteem, and inadequacy. This is particularly true for mothers whose life circumstances make it difficult for them to realize their maternal potential, such as mothers who are abused by their partner.

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The Mothering of Abused Women

Little has been written on the many and unique challenges facing women who deal simultaneously with a violent partner and with their role as mothers. Most of the studies in this domain examined the link between the impact of violence on the mother and the development of various problems in her children. The violence of men toward their female partners combines mental, sexual, economic, and physical abuse, generally increasing in severity over the years and affecting its victims on physiological, behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual levels. Studies have shown that, compared with women who are not subjected to violence, abused women tend to suffer more from mental problems such as anxiety, fear, low self-esteem, social isolation, posttraumatic stress, and suicidal impulses as well as physical injuries and illnesses, substance abuse, economic hardship, and social isolation (Briere & Jordan, 2004; Golding, 1999; Lafta, 2008; Lloyd, 1997; Woods, 2005). One may surmise, therefore, that violence has the effect of reducing womens parental resources and makes it more difficult for them to function as a parent on a day-to-day basis. This difficult situation is further exacerbated by the deficiencies of abusive partners as fathers. These fathers were found to be rigid and authoritative (Bancroft & Silverman, 2002), uninvolved in their childrens lives and negligent of their basic needs (including those thwarted by the violence; Holden & Ritchie, 1991; Sterenberg et al., 1994), selfabsorbed and possessive of the child (Ayoub, Grace, Paradise, & Newberger, 1991), manipulative (Bancroft & Silverman, 2002; Vock, Elliott, & Spironello, 1997), and physically punitive but not physically affectionate (Fox & Benson, 2004; Holden & Ritchie, 1991). It has also been found that a womans role as mother is often the object of direct attacks by the violent partner, for example, by inciting the children against her, openly denigrating her mothering skills, and undermining her maternal functioning by imposing various restrictions and prohibitions (Bancroft & Silverman, 2002; Jaffe, Johnston, Crooks, & Balla, 2008; Vock et al., 1997). Another challenge to the mothering of abused women is posed by the increasing needs of their children following their exposure to the violence (Kitzmann, Gaylord, Holt, & Kenny, 2003). This litany of hardships does not necessarily diminish after the women leave their violent partners, as the violenceand certainly its consequencesoften does not end with the separation and indeed may worsen as a result (Hotton, 2001). Furthermore, abusive partners may use family court litigation as a new forum to continue their coercive controlling behavior and to harass their former partner, and courts may inappropriately hold abused womens stress-related behavior against them in decisions regarding access and custody of the children (Jaffe et al., 2008; Jaffe, Lemon, & Poisson, 2003; Rosen & OSullivan, 2005). Unfortunately, child protection services often add to, rather than relieve, the abused mothers distress by blaming her for her childrens difficulties related to their exposure to the violence (Davis & Krane, 2006). Most studies of the mothering of abused women have assumed that these hardships adversely affect their maternal functioning by reducing their ability to attend to their children, their involvement in the childrens lives, and their emotional and physical accessibility to the children as well as through the use of inappropriate disciplinary methods such as

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corporal punishment. However, the findings are mixed and do not categorically support this supposition. Thus, for instance, it has been found that neither do abused women necessarily employ more negative methods of punishment nor do they have greater difficulty in maintaining their childrens routine compared with women who are not abused (Holden & Ritchie, 1991; Holden, Stein, Ritchie, Harris, & Jouriles, 1998). The premise that abused women are comparatively less accessible, emotionally and physically, to their children was also unsupported (Holden et al., 1998; Letourneau, Fedick, & Willms, 2007; Sullivan, Nguyen, Allen, Bybee, & Juras, 2000). Furthermore, while a number of studies have found that abused women tend to be more physically abusive toward their children compared with other women (e.g., Salzinger et al., 2002; Straus & Gelles, 1990), others have found no differences between the two groups (e.g., Holden et al., 1998; Holden & Ritchie, 1991; Sullivan et al., 2000). Moreover, Levendosky and her colleagues have found the mothering skills of abused women to be very effective (Levendosky, Huth-Bocks, Shapiro, & Semel, 2003) and the women themselves competent in forming proper attachments with their children. Although a number of women in this study have reported symptoms of depression, this did not impede their proper functioning. Findings from a 5-year longitudinal survey of Canadian families suggest that mothers of children exposed to domestic violence show, over time, a greater increase in positive discipline and less of a decrease in warm and nurturing behaviors compared with mothers of children not exposed (Letourneau et al., 2007). Other studies have indicated that abused women deploy a range of actions to prevent or minimize their childrens exposure to violence, be it as witnesses or as victims (e.g., Haight, Shim, Linn, & Swinford, 2007; Hilton, 1992; Levendosky, Lynch, & Graham-Bermann, 2000; Mohr, Fantuzzo, & Abdul-Kabir, 2001). Women also cited the protection of the children as playing a chief role in their decision to stay with the violent partner or to leave him (Hilton, 1992; Laks, 2000). Studies on the perception of abused women of their mothering revolve around two issues: on one hand, the mothering experience and the impact of violence on it, and, on the other, the effect of the violence on the children and on their needs. Studies examining the perception of parental stress among abused women have found a significant variation in the levels of parental stress among them (Hughes & Huth-Bocks, 2007). Furthermore, abused women considered their roles as parents more stressful compared with mothers in control groups (Holden et al., 1998; Holden & Ritchie, 1991; Levendosky & Graham-Bermann, 1998; Sullivan et al., 2000), even during pregnancy, before the birth of the child (Huth-Bocks, Levendosky, Theran, & Bogat, 2004). Mothering-related stress increased proportionately with the degree and severity of the violence toward the women (Holden et al., 1998; Levendosky & Graham-Bermann, 1998) and with the severity of the childrens behavioral problems (Holden & Ritchie, 1991; Sullivan et al., 2000). Levendosky and her colleagues (2000), in a study of abused womens perceptions of the effect of the abuse on their mothering skills, found that a quarter of the participants thought the violence had no impact on their parenting, whereas the remainder cited a number of effects, some positive and some negative. As a rule, the parenting difficulties mentioned were substantially similar to those cited by women who are not victims of abuse, and a third of the women stated that their performance as mothers would be precisely the same without the violence. That said, most

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of the mothers believed that the absence of violence would improve their mothering by increasing their emotional availability to their children. Laks (2000) found that women in refuges for battered women saw their mothering as the most significant, central, and satisfying experience of their lives, and the basis for a feeling of self-worth, in contrast to the feelings of helplessness they felt when subjected to violence. The interviewees reported that although their parental functioning was intact despite the violence, it was accompanied by feelings of isolation, numbness, and robot-like behavior. Several studies examined the concerns battered women have about their children and have found high levels of anxiety, both in general and due to the impact the violence might have on their childrenphysically and emotionally, in the short and long terms (DeVoe & Smith, 2002; Henderson, 1993; Hilton, 1992; Holden et al., 1998; Levendosky et al., 2000; Mohr et al., 2001). Findings about the perception by battered women of the degree to which their children were exposed to violence, however, are not unequivocal. Most mothers in the studies by Hilton (1992) and DeVoe and Smith (2002) reported that their children see, hear, and are aware of violence in the family and are negatively affected by their exposure to it. However, Stephens (1999) and Henderson (1993) report that the mothers in their studies downplayed or denied such exposure and its effect on the children and explain it as a result of focusing on their own problems or due to various psychological or perceptual defects. Two qualitative studies that asked mothers about their communication with the children on the violence (Acker, Ho, Rossman, & Barnhart, 1998; DeVoe & Smith, 2002) found that although all the mothers saw it as difficult or painful for the children, most thought it right to talk with the children immediately after each violent incident, and several thought that they must avoid such discussion altogether, fearing it might harm the children.

Summary and Research Questions

Holding up social and cultural constructions of motherhood against the harsh life situations of abused women raises questions about their experiences as mothers. The general picture that emerges from the available research is complex and open to debate, both in terms of the degree to which these womens mothering behavior is different from that of women who are not abused and in terms of their perception of the impact of the violence on their mothering and the children. Abused womens overall perception of their mothering has hardly been studied. Furthermore, most studies of the mothering of abused women were conducted within shelters, and therefore their findings may reflect the particular characteristics of this context and population (e.g., Hilton, 1992; Holden et al., 1998; Laks, 2000; Levendosky & Graham-Bermann, 1998). A critical examination of the reviewed studies reveals that most were influenced by traditional constructs of motherhood when examining the degree to which the womens maternal functioning provided for their childrens needs, while making virtually no reference to the needs of the women themselves or to the challenges they face as mothers. The purpose of this study is to examine the overall perception by abused women in the community of their mothering. The two major questions of this study were (a) How do abused women perceive their mothering? and (b) Is their being abused evident in their mothering perceptions and, if so, how?

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Method
Data for this study were collected as part of a larger project aimed at developing, implementing, and evaluating parenting group intervention models for women victims of domestic violence (Peled & Perel, 2006). Interviews were conducted with abused mothers using a naturalistic qualitative approach. Coming from a naturalistic approach, we assumed that the experience of mothering for abused women is multiple, constructed, and holistic, that the understanding of womens perceptions of this experience is bound within a particular context, and that the inquiry of these self-perceptions is value laden (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). In particular, the feminist critique of the myth of motherhood and its potential negative impact on the lives of abused women provided the study with a moral and criticaltheoretical framework, stressing the importance of understanding the womens selfperceptions (Davis & Krane, 2006).

Population and Organizational Context

Interviewees for this study were recruited from three domestic violence intervention and prevention centers in central Israel. Currently, there are 73 such centers in the country, varying in size and in the range of interventions provided. These centers are responsible for the bulk of interventions with women abused by their partners in Israel. All of the centers offer basic and advanced individual and group intervention for abused women, aimed at helping them stop the violence in their lives and heal from its consequences as well as intervention for abusive men and exposed children. The dominant intervention approach with abused women is psychoeducational with a growing influence of psychodynamic therapy in advanced phases of the intervention. The centers are cofunded by the local municipalities, the Welfare Ministry, and womens organizations; they employ experienced social workers trained for intervention in this domain. The centers women client population is diverse in terms of personal characteristics, the circumstances of their referral, and the type and severity of the abuse they experienced. The research population was defined as women (a) currently in contact with one of the centers, (b) who acknowledged being abused by their partner during the previous year, (c) who are mothers, and (d) who are able to express themselves in Hebrew reasonably well. After the study was approved by the Ministry of Welfare authorities and by the centers management, several of the centers workers were approached with a request to provide the names of women who had agreed to consider participating in the study.

Sample
A two-stage sampling procedure was used. First, we interviewed 15 women for whom workers provided us with contact information. We gave the women a preliminary explanation by telephone and, if they were willing to participate, set up a meeting to obtain their informed consent. Following the logic of purposive sampling, which lies in selecting information-rich cases for study in depth, we then used the strategy of intensity sampling

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(Patton, 1990) and chose 10 of the 15 interviews to be analyzed for this study. These interviews manifested both experiences of violence and mothering intensely (but not extremely), thus facilitating an understanding of the womens perceptions of these experiences. The age of the participants ranged from 23 to 46. Four were married, 4 were separated, and 2 divorced. All were living with their children. The number of children ranged from 1 to 7 and the ages of the children ranged from 2 to 21. Eight participants were employed full-time, 1 worked part-time, and 1 did not work outside the home. One defined her income level as high, 4 as average, 3 as low, and 1 as very low. All lived in cities or towns in the central region of Israel. Six reported that their partners violence had ceased at the time of the interview and four reported it was ongoing. All of the participants completed at least 5 months of basic group intervention for abused women.

Data Collection
Data were collected by means of a semistructured in-depth interview (Patton, 1990). The interview topics included the womans experiences as a mother, how she perceives her mothering, and her views of the connection between her parenting and the violence. The interviews lasted 1.5 to 2 hr each and were conducted by trained members of the research team, all of them social workers. All interviews were conducted at the interviewees home, except for one which took place at the domestic violence center. Each interview began with a detailed explanation about the research, a short acquaintance with the interviewer, and an informed consent procedure. All of the participants collaborated willingly and openly during the interviews and in most cases needed very little prompting to discuss their mothering and their violent experiences. At the end of the interview, the women were asked to fill out a short demographic questionnaire. They were also given the option to contact the interviewer with any concerns or further thoughts about the interview topics. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed fully and accurately.

Data Analysis and Quality Criteria

The findings were content analyzed (Patton, 1990). Each interview was read to identify units of meaning that were then distilled into 13 central categories reflecting the contents contained in the entire sample regarding perceptions of mothering. Next, the interview texts were sorted under the relevant categories and each category was analyzed separately in an effort to establish further meanings arising from it. Finally, the analyzed data were examined in their entirety and an organizing framework for the presentation of the data was formed. The assessment of research quality was based on acceptable criteria for naturalistic and qualitative research studies (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The credibility of the findings was supported by the use of in-depth interviews, which encourage open and free dialogue (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The analysis was carried out by Inbal, with ongoing and intensive involvement of Einat. The dialogue between us facilitated a reflexive examination of the analysis processes. For example, we made a conscious and deliberate effort to avoid as much as possible an interpretive reading, labeling, and classification of the texts (e.g., a

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psychopathological or feminist one) during the data analysis stage and use the womens own terminology as much as possible. These efforts, in addition to the interviewing method, supported the trustworthiness of the findings. The transferability of findings was supported by a full and detailed description of the research population and processes.

Ethical Standards
The study was approved by an institutional review board at the Israeli Ministry of Welfare and met accepted ethical benchmarks for qualitative research studies (Peled & Leichtentritt, 2002). To ensure the participants emotional well-being, a fully informed consent for participation was secured, the interviews were conducted in an open and respectful manner while allowing their termination by participants at any time, and participants were guaranteed assistance following the interviews, if needed, by a helping professional in the domestic violence center through which they were recruited. The womens identities and identifying personal details are concealed in the presentation of the findings.

Findings
The interviewed women described their lives as abused mothers through two, mostly separate, accountsthat of the violence and that of the motheringand went into extensive detail of how they dealt with each of these experiences. They told how they were subjected to various kinds of violence and of varying intensity. Some reported particularly harsh physical violence, whereas others experienced almost exclusively emotional abuse. All the women described the daily hardship and suffering inflicted on their lives by their violent partners. The impact of the violence on their mood and behavior manifested itself in bouts of anxiety and heightened stress, to the point of requiring medical intervention in some cases. Although at the time of the interviews the violence toward some of the women had stopped and they had even separated from their partners, its emotional and mental injuries were still evident in their lives. The womens perceptions of their mothering centered on three main aspects common to the social perceptions of good intensive mothering (Douglas & Michaels, 2004). First, they spoke about how central their role as mothers was to their lives. They stressed that the children are above all else and that they must do everything for the sake of the children. They appeared to place mothering at the top of their priorities, before their roles as partners, as friends, as out-of-home working women, or as members of an extended family. Second, they saw themselves as the primary, if not the exclusive, person responsible for raising their children. They viewed others, including the fathers, as being less capable and less responsible than themselves. Third, all their actions and thoughts as mothers focused on one aim: full and absolute provision of their childrens needsphysically, emotionally, and educationally. This included their obligation to spare their children any exposure to adversities such as economic hardships, parental conflicts, emotional deprivations, and the like. Yet during the interviews, the women only rarely spontaneously described the impact of violence on their lives as mothers and on their mothering, generally doing so only in response to a direct question by the interviewer.

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The women viewed the violence as a negative behavior that might harm their childrens emotional and behavioral development, both in the short and long terms, and thus wished to protect them from exposure to it. To this end, they strove to maintain an absolute separation between the violent external world and the childrens world. Their attempt to create a violence-free reality for their children was evident in three coping fronts detailed below: the first, toward themselves, in an attempt to prevent the abuse from adversely impacting their mothering; the second, toward their partner and the father of their children, in an attempt to restrain his violent behavior and to preserve his positive image as a father in the eyes of their children; and the third, toward the children, in a bid to shield them from any exposure to violence. These fronts required the women to employ various strategies. As they saw it, they mostly succeeded in separating the world of violence from the mothering world, thus shielding their children from exposure to the violence. Nevertheless, the interviews reveal hints and occasionally direct evidence that the children were in fact exposed to violence of one sort or another and that the mothers found it difficult to acknowledge.

To Be a Mother As If I Were Not Abused

As noted, the women saw themselves as good, competent mothers, alert to their childrens needs and working ceaselessly to provide for them. As good mothers, they had to prevent any interface between their status as an abused woman and that of mother: Im dealing with [the violence]. Of course, its hard. But they shouldnt have to suffer because of it. So you make sure theres a separation. Children are children, Im me, and do my complaining and recharging somewhere else. Because theyre not to blame. [Gila] The mothers desire to go on functioning normally led them to a point where they found themselves conducting two parallel lives, as Gila, a mother of two preschool children, continues to explain: You should know that Im two different people. From the time that I was living with him, I had to be two people. It was like, this one was to be his wife, and this one was to be a mother. [Gila] The separation between the roles took place at the functional, the emotional, and the cognitive levels. The womens efforts to minimize the impact of the violence on their functioning as mothers entailed the endurance of physical and emotional pain, as illustrated in Ayalas description: I was weak, a lot of anger at myself, a lot of states of depression, moods where I could sit and cry for hours without knowing what to do, whether to stay at home and do nothing, nothing at all. I mean, I could sleep from morning till evening and just do nothing . . . and of course I was uneasy inside and less patient with

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the kids . . . although I really kept trying hard to make sure everything was alright. Because, again, like I told you, everything depended on me. I knew that if I dont do things, no one will, so somehow I just kept pushing myself along from the moment the children came back . . . if it was in the morning then as soon as they went off to preschool I would get into bed and sleep till lunchtime, then they would come back and then once again with the food and everything else. The women thought it essential not to let on to their children how they felt. Many of them reported how they hid their depression, anxiety, and fear, and tried to present a happy, calm, and optimistic face toward their children, even in situations of severe violence: When a mother feels good, so does her child; when a mother feels bad, the child looks and feels that way, too. So whats important for me right now is to show them that, even if Im not feeling so good just now, that I am feeling good, to sort of broadcast to them that everythings fine, because its important to me that they feel OK. [Aviva] You can catch me anytimeeven at the worst timesIm always with a smile on my face. [Naomi] At the cognitive level, the violence was shut out by using a positive attitude as a way of overcoming negative perceptions of their situation as abused women. All the women described themselves as basically optimistic and happy, the kind who tended to see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. They believed this attitude allowed them to deal in an adaptive manner with difficult situations, to minimize the impacts of violence, to look positively on their lives and on the lives of their children, and to perceive themselves as empowered and competent: In the worst situation possible, I find something good in it, and I focus on that and not on all the bad stuff around it, but on the good. And thats what gives me strength. Thats how I cope. [Sarit] The women tried to fend off the impact of the violence on their mothering and to preserve their self- and projected image as good, functioning mothers. Nonetheless, the interviews uncovered occasions when the women sensed that the violence did have some impact on their mothering. The women presented each of these situations as a one off, short term, or exceptional, the sort that does not reflect how they coped overall while the violence was going on. In addition, they perceived the damage as being mostly emotional and not impairing their functional ability. Clearly, they were reluctant to examine the possible impact of violence on their mothering and felt conflicted over its magnitude. Only one interviewee, a mother of 5 who was still abused by her partner at the time of the interview, spoke directly about the damage the violence caused to her children and to her mothering:

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But the worse thing that Ive done to the children is in the fact that theyve grown up in a house with violence. And what kind of a good mother am I? A bad mother. Very bad. I should have stopped it, for their sakes. No matter how hard it was, I shouldve done it. . . . Like I told you, I felt like a criminal. [Mazal]

Fixing the Violent Father

The women described how the fathers made no effort to hide their violence from the children and at times even exposed them to it directly with no qualms whatsoever. Furthermore, the fathers actively involved the children in their rowseither by using them to hurt the mother, by abusing her verbally in their presence, or by asking the children to side with them against their mother. Yet the women deemed it very important for the children to have a father figure and so were ambivalent about the position the father should have in their childrens lives. Gila was aware of the tragic conflict characterizing her feelings toward the father of her children: Its sad and its terrible . . . he would make a scene and terrorize us and break things and then leave the house, and I would say, Please God, make him come home safely, just as long as he returns. I would see him and I would become all happy happy that they have a father. Why should I wish him anything? This is the father of my children. Why should I do something bad to him? Gila and the other mothers therefore found themselves in a dilemma: if they distance the father from the children, they achieve the aim of shielding the children from exposure to violence but also compromise what they consider to be a very important connection of the children to their father. The solution that many of them seemed to have found was to keep the father as a positive figure in their childrens lives, while trying to prevent the childrens exposure to violence. To this end, the women employed various techniques, including prevention and reduction of the violence and of its impact, along with correction, explaining, and downplaying the fathers actions, as Mazal describes it: Apart from the difficulty [of the violence] I had to both educate and fix [sic]. All these years my husband was not a positive figure and I had to fix this all the time . . . not to poison the children about their father, not to tell them that their father is wrong to do what he does, to fix it and to try to make them spend as little time as possible with him . . . to keep them busy. To protect the children from exposure to violence, the women held their tongue, put off arguments, gave in to their partners, kept information from them, and recruited others to help reduce the violence. For example, the women described how they timed arguments with the partner to take place after the children had gone to bed or were out of hearing range.

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When the women failed to prevent the fathers violent outbursts in the childrens presence, they tried to minimize the childrens exposure to it as much as possible. They did so by removing the children from the scene, by trying to ignore the violence when it occurred, and by trying to distract the children from it, as demonstrated by Yael: [The threats were uttered] next to my childs preschool. I made as if [it was nothing], and the girl was present with me. I said to myself, This is not on. This guy is looking for a fight. So I went home as if he had said nothing. Distraction was used when the children were present at the violent situation to minimize the impression that such exposure might have on them and their awareness of the violence. This was done by various means, such as raising the music volume (to drown out the shouting), by talking with the child or by playing with him or her while the violence was taking place, as Mazal recalled: I once got beaten up while holding two childrenand straight away told them a funny story. The womens attempts to hide the violence and to preserve the fathers positive image also went on after the violent incidents, by avoiding any open discussion about the violence and covering up and lying about the fathers actions.

Avoiding Discussion of the Violence with the Children

As part of the womens effort to create a world without violence for their children, they avoided almost any mention of the violence with the children and their children seemed to do the same. This silent agreement was maintained, at times, for years on end, even after the children had grown into adults and also when the mothers knew that the children knew. The women explained that talking about the violence would make it more difficult for their children and shatter whatever illusions they may have had regarding their family or father. As Aviva suggested, The [children] dont want to stir things up, so that it wouldnt hurt. [They prefer] to pretend that it didnt happen. The mothers avoidance of any talk about violence with their children seems to be at odds with their description of their relationship with their children as open and with mutual empathy and the importance they attributed to being aware of their childrens feelings so they can support them in distressful situations. The few conversations they did have on the subject were initiated by the children, with questions such as Why isnt Daddy home? or Why are you and Daddy fighting? In most of these cases, the women distanced the children from the subject, sometimes by intentionally distorting reality: [I told the children], You have to understand that theres no such thing as a Mummy and Daddy who dont fight occasionally. No such thing. Every Mummy and Daddy in the world fight sometimes. If they dont, then they cant buy you guys things; if Mummy and Daddy dont fight then we cant do anything in the house. How would we have a house? How would we have a TV? And how would you get any games? How would you get food, or pay for water and telephone? Its not

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magic. I said that we have to pay for water and electricity and telephone, and everything needs money. And thats why there are always arguments, in every home. [Yael] That none of the women reported discussing the violence with the children while it was taking place may attest to the extremity of the emotional difficulty involved in such mutual disclosure regarding the violence and its impact on the children. Only a few of the women told of raising the subject of the violence with the children in one form or another after it had ended: Its very important for me . . . recently Ive been trying very hard to bring them closer, and, you know, put the cards on the table. And what I tried to talk about with my son on Saturday night, I wanted to know a little bit how he felt all the years, because he wouldnt talk about itthey wouldnt talk about it, you know? And I understand themwhat is there to say? Theres no time to say anything and already you have more shouting, more swearing . . . its something that goes on just all the time, non-stop. [Naomi] A number of women pointed out that their reluctance to discuss the violence with the children was due to their fear that they themselves were not strong enough to deal with the subject. Avivas words attest to this: Maybe [I can learn] how to behave with the children after the violence, how to talk about it. It would help a lot; it would strengthen me a lot.

Have the Women Succeeded in Creating a Violence-Free World for Their Children?
The question of whether they succeeded in creating an effective barrier between the violence and the children was not posed by the women themselves but seemed to be present in the interviews not only as a wish and as an expectation but also as a worrisome concern. All but one of the women seemed to avoid a direct encounter with this question. Their allusions to it were blurred and at times contradictory with what seemed to be an understating of the childrens awareness of violence, the number of times that they were exposed to it, and the degree to which the violence impacted them. For example, Because, at the end of the day, he feels it. Everything. . . . [The father] can shout at me on the phone, and I can hang up and smile to the boy and tell him, Come, lets have a bath, but he feels it. Q: How do you know that he feels it? I see him. I feel how he feels itor how he suddenly, totally turns away from me, from talking, from the fact that maybe he hears these kinds of tones on the phone. Thats the most noticeable thing. And Im glad; I know that maybe hell manage to

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cut himself off. Really cut himself offyou know, like, The grownups are shouting, I dont care, Im just going play with my toys. [Michal] Some of the mothers told of their childrens exposure to the violence to some degree or another and thought it has affected them. However, the degree to which the children were exposed to violence and affected by it was not clear to the mothers: Im sure that theyre in a kind of crisis. They come home from school. Thank God, no problems there. But sometimes it happens that my son has these outbursts at school, that heslike he saystrying to defend himself. I know theyre good kids, but theres got to be some kind of fallout from everything theyve gone through and have seen, and maybe they dont remember so well, because they were small, but how could they not be affected? [Ayala] From the womens descriptions, it is evident that most of them believed that they were usually successful in hiding the violence and that the childrens exposure to it was minimal. Gila, for example, is describing the exposure of her 6-year-old daughter, who lived all her life with the emotionally and physically abusive behavior of her father toward her mother: There was one time when he tore the clothes off of me, like this, and he kind of kicked me like this, and it was next to my girl, and I had to take her to preschool. And she cried and clung close to me, which means that this time, she saw. Another time I didnt think she knew, and she saw, but she told me [when we were] alone that at Grandmas place after that she saw me crying. And this . . . lets just say these were the only times. What I know is that she saw this maybe four or five times. From the few references the mothers did make to the harm caused to their children by the violence, it is apparent that the childrens reactions to the violence and its impact on their behavior were considerable. They described states of dread, mental stress, changes in mood, emotional problems (manifested in bursts of rage or in bottling up and social introversion), reduced performance (especially academically), and medical problems such as headaches and vomiting. The contrast between these descriptions and the minimal references made by the interviewees to the harm caused to the children was striking. Only one of the women, Naomi, spoke throughout the interview about the effects of her sons exposure to the violence and about the great concerns that this raised in her: I suddenly saw the child close up. He used to be a very active boy, kind of hyperactive, and suddenly hed become very quiet. . . . And I knew that it had to do with the violence, of course I knew. It screamed out at me. Look, the situations where [the partner] began to shout . . . and Im not talking about ordinary shoutingbut real roars, that would raise the whole buildingthat was kind of abnormal. So he would go into his room and put the blanket over his head.

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Only two of the women mentioned briefly how they coped with the effects the exposure to the violence had on their children. In accordance with her view of good mothering, Orly attempted to help her daughter maintain a better separation between the violence and her world as a child: Sheat the beginning of the crisis she almost plummeted at school. Luckily, I caught her at an early stage, right at the beginning. I told her, Put everything to one side, and put all your efforts only in your schoolwork. And thank God I succeeded in that. Naomi described how she identified her sons mental distress, which led her eventually to appeal for professional help. Her story also reveals her distress at the sight of her sons suffering, her sense that she was ill-equipped to deal with the problem by herself, and her frustration with the attitude of the professionals: He suffered from mental stress from the age of 9. He would just start vomiting nonstop. All day long. We have a file this thick at the hospital. And I always knew that its mental stress, and they would do these tests on him and I would say to the doctor, There are problems at home. . . . The boy isnt capable of taking the mental stress and this is his way of getting it out. . . . And again I would run to the schools social worker, and againmy distressHelp me help my child. . . . They knew about all this at the school, its not as if I was trying to hide it or anything, and the social worker, and nobody helped him, which pains me very much to this day . . .

Discussion
The stories of violence and of mothering in this study were mostly presented as a split narrative. A unified narrative, one that brings these two worlds together, was almost entirely absent. It seems that the interviewed women found it particularly difficult to deal with the coexistence of the two worlds and therefore sought to understate the degree to which they overlapped. When they did talk about it, they minimized the number, frequency, intensity, and impact of these points of contact on their mothering and on their children. What can we learn from this split narrative about the mothering perceptions and experiences of abused women? This discussion will focus on understanding the perception of mothering as expressed in the split narrative and on the meanings and implications of the split narrative for the mothers and their children. The vast literature on the impact of domestic violence on exposed children (see Kitzmann et al., 2003 for a review) and the limited but telling presence of such impact in the interviews raise questions about the extent to which the womens split narrative represented their reality: Were they aware that the violence had an impact on their mothering and on the children and sought to cover up its evidence before the interviewers? Were these sincere accounts that reflected the womens lack of awareness of these impacts? Did the

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majority of our interviewees and their children belong to a subpopulation of abused women who manage to function well as mothers (Letourneau et al., 2007; Levendosky et al., 2003; Sullivan et al., 2000) and children who are resilient to the impact of exposure (Gewirtz & Edleson, 2007; Margolin, 2005)? Theories dealing with the presentation of self suggest that people define their identity, reality, and world through a process that plays out between themselves and the rest of society (Goffman, 1959; Laing, 1959). An individual is subjected to certain social norms that tell her what constitutes correct behavior, by which she organizes her daily life and defines her identity. Others, with whom she maintains social relationships, confirm whether her identity is an acceptable one that is consistent with these norms. Advocates of narrative-based approaches (Riessman, 2008) also contend that peoples stories reflect the truth as they experience it even if these stories are adapted in various ways to suit their personal perceptions, which in turn are molded by social perceptions. According to these theories, a persons presentation of him- or herself is an authentic expression of his or her perceptions. We may learn from this that the womens perceptions, as evident in our findings, were presentations of self that they believed comply with social perceptions of what is good mothering. As mentioned above, women in our society are exposed to significant pressures to comply with the myth of motherhood (Douglas & Michaels, 2004; Hays, 1996) and the identity of a good mother may be particularly important for abused women whose mothering is often the only sphere in their lives in which they feel a sense of control and self-fulfillment. Thus, one may conclude that the womens claim to have succeeded in creating a violencefree world for their children is sincere and that the apparent contradictions in their descriptions and the vague hints at the intrusion of violence into their mothering and into the lives of their children are a true reflection of their world as they see it. In other words, by dealing simultaneously with the two narratives at oncethe split and the combinedthe women are engaged in a form of dialogue between mothering as they would like it to be and strive to achieve, and the violent reality that they try to push away as far as possible. This attempt at bridging the gulf between reality and what they desire possibly came about in response to the need to give an account of their lives in an interview, but it was addressed first and foremost to themselves. The split that emerged in the interviews concerning the two central experiences in the lives of the abused mothers is between the good (the mothering) and the bad (the violence). The women described their experiences of violence in harsh and painful terms, amid references to feelings such as exhaustion, depression, anxiety, misery, and hopelessness. The mothering experiences, however, were seen as positive and fulfilling. The women clearly greatly enjoyed this role and mostly considered themselves very good at it. Another possible interpretation of this split narrative is to see it as part of a psychological defense mechanism whose purpose is to keep the negative images separate from the positive ones by means of denial, suppression, idealization, devaluation, and omnipotence (Kernberg, 1984). Splitting is a common mechanism among abused women when dealing with domestic violence and its associated trauma. It manifests itself in denial, in suppressed memories, or in downplaying the violence (e.g., Herman, 1992; Kemp, Rawlings, & Green, 1991; Lempert, 1994; Riessman, 1989). In this study, too, the women seemed to exhibit similar mechanisms

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on each of the three fronts in which they had to cope as mothers. In contrast to the idealization of their mothering, the effects of violence on it were seen as nonexistent or minimal. It is possible, for example, to interpret their belief that one should see only the good and not the bad as reflecting their concern that integrating the two would turn them from good mothers into bad ones. We may also surmise that their inclination to idealize motherhood was reinforced by the need to comply with societys definitions of devoted and intensive motherhood. Studies have found that mothers are reluctant to admit to a mothering experience that is not ideal or which reveals any negative feelings that it may entail (Braverman, 1989; Niemela, 1982; Raz, 2000). The increased idealization of motherhood during particularly difficult periods for the mothers is explained as a defensive reaction to the distress caused by the growing contrast between the idealized version and reality (Niemela, 1982; Ortmeyer, 1987). Another source for stimulating defensive reactions in abused mothers regarding their mothering are the judgmental and blaming reactions they often receive from social service providers, the courts, and the general public, who tend to attribute to them the responsibility for their childrens exposure to the violence (Davis & Krane, 2006; Rosen & OSullivan, 2005; Terrance, Plumm, & Little, 2008). Another indication of the split-narrative strategy is evident in the womens descriptions of their patterns of communication with their children. While generally characterizing the communication as open and sincere, anything to do with the violence was almost completely omitted. Similar findings about the silent agreement between mothers and their children surrounding domestic violence were reported in studies by Acker et al. (1998) and DeVoe and Smith (2002). According to the mothers, they opted not to discuss the violence with their children in a bid to protect them and make it easier for them. Some of the women interviewed by Haight and her colleagues (2007) explained they did not know how to talk about the violence with the children or felt too overwhelmed to do it. The women in this study described how they devoted themselves fully to the task of mothering and fought to provide for their childrens needs with considerable effort and pain. Their unremitting struggle and reported success at meeting personal and social expectations under conditions of distress, victimization, and deprivation are awe-inspiring and explicable perhaps only by virtue of the aforementioned splitting strategy. Though it was suggested that the mothers attunement to their childrens emotions may serve to protect children from potentially disruptive effects of exposure to domestic violence (Johnson & Lieberman, 2007), one may speculate that the splitting between the violence and the mothering fulfilled in part a functional need for the women and for their children in that it enabled them to survive the reality of their lives. Indeed, adopting such techniques has been found in some studies to be important to continued functioning in situations of crisis and trauma (Herman, 1992; Niemela, 1982; Ortmeyer, 1987). Moreover, by allowing women to view their mothering as a functional, protective, and benevolent experience in their lives, splitting may contribute to a positive self-image and feelings of competence and strength as a victim (Levendosky et al., 2000). It may have also enhanced their ability to preserve vitality and to summon strength to cope with the harsh reality of violence. Were it not for the strategies of splitting and idealization, it is quite possible that feelings of stress, strain, helplessness, shame, and guilt would emerge (Metzer-Maoz, 1995; Niemela, 1982),

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further weakening their ability to cope and making it even more difficult for them to function as mothers. In summary, the split narrative may be seen as an expression of the mothers attempt to meet societys and their own expectations of themselves as fully functional mothers, even in the face of domestic violence. Although minimizing and distancing the violence from the mothering domain may have supported their mothering in various ways, it also may have compromised the mothers ability to provide some of their childrens emotional needs in the wake of their exposure to violence.

Conclusion and Implications for Practice

The perceptions of motherhood and mothering by abused women that emerges in this study illustrate the many and complex challenges with which they must deal in their attempt to protect their children and provide for their needs, at times against all odds. Their split narratives seem to represent, at least partially, the womens reaction to pressures put on them by the myth of motherhood in general and, in particular, by the critical and judgmental attitudes toward abused womens mothering as expressed by various social agents. Thus, one can understand the split narrative found in this study as an indication of our failure as a society to allow mothers to acknowledge and examine their less-than-perfect experiences of mothering, feel normal and reinforced in doing so, and receive the support they need in their efforts to grant their children and themselves a good-enough mothering experience. In light of this understanding, and as there are no empirical grounds to assume that abused women are worse mothers than other mothers, professional approaches to these mothers should be based on empathetic, empowering, and nonjudgmental attitudes. In particular, staff of the medical, child welfare, and criminal justice systems need to make a conscious effort to counteract oppressive and victimizing derivations of the myth of motherhood when working with abused women. This entails, for example, considering the difficult circumstances within which abused women parent and an understanding of their situational nature, providing true opportunities for the women to describe their struggles and achievements in mothering under violence and offering all abused women a mother- (rather than a child-) centered supportive intervention focused on their experience as mothers rather than on their mothering (mal)functioning. We endorse the conclusions of other writers who have highlighted the need to design an empowering intervention for abused mothersone that focuses on their qualities and strengths as mothers and on their mothering experiences (e.g., Berliner, 1998; Bilinkoff, 1995; Davis & Krane, 2006; Levendosky et al., 2000; Radford & Hester, 2001; Sullivan et al., 2000). Possible foci in such an intervention might include identifying the womens strengths and coping abilities as mothers, observing the motherhood myth, exploring the split narrative of mothering and violence, and ways and means of responding to their childrens exposure to violence (see Peled & Perel, 2006). Implementation of the findings must be cautious and tentative, taking into account the limitations of generalization inherent in the study methodology and the sample. The perceptions of the interviewees in this study were most likely affected by their

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sociocultural context, being urban Jewish Israelis who mostly also work outside the home and who have received domestic violence intervention. Future studies could broaden the examination of the perception of mothering by abused women using larger and more diverse population samples, including women from other cultural groups as well as women who have not received domestic violence intervention and those who reside in shelters for abused women. Other research directions arising from this study include an in-depth and comprehensive examination of the postulated link between womens self-perception as mothers and their experience of violence, through comparative research of abused women versus women living in other distressful situations and women living without domestic violence. Such a study may be of great practical importance as it might answer the question of whether there is a need to tailor parenting intervention programs to the needs of abused women or whether they could also benefit from programs designed for women who mother under distressful situations or for the general population of mothers. In addition, knowledge arising from such a comparative study may influence the mechanisms of social categorization that treat abused mothers as problematic mothers. Finally, we propose that the childrens viewpoints also be studied, as to the importance and meaning of dialogues between them and their mothers about the violence.

Acknowledgments
The authors thank the mothers who were interviewed for this research and provided them with painful insights and the Centers for Domestic Violence Prevention and Intervention in Netanya, Petach Tikva, and Herzliya, which assisted in locating the interviewees. The authors thank the Ashalim Foundation for material and professional assistance at various stages of the research.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

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Bios
Einat Peled, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the Bob Shapell School of Social Work at Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. She currently studies the areas of domestic violence and violence against women, with a particular emphasis on the experiences of mothering and fathering under these circumstances. Her recent books, together with Guy Perel, are Fathering and Violence: A Group Intervention Model for Men Who Abuse Their Partner and Mothering in the Shadow of Violence: A Group Intervention Model for Women Abused by Their Partner (both in Hebrew). Inbal Barak Gil, MSW, has been working for the past 13 years as a mental health officer in the Israeli Defense Force. She specializes in individual therapy and has provided supervision to social workers in this area for the last 4 years.