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Mother-Blaming in the Shadow of Incest: Commentary on “Motherhood in the

Shadow of Incest” by Rachel Lev-Wiesel

Article in Journal of Child Sexual Abuse · February 2007

DOI: 10.1300/J070v16n01_08 · Source: PubMed

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 Mother-Blaming in the Shadow of Incest:
Commentary on “Motherhood
in the Shadow of Incest”
by Rachel Lev-Wiesel
Kathleen Coulborn Faller

This commentary will be divided into three sections. In the first, I

will address the issue of mother’s role in incest. The second section will
comprise some comments on methodology. Finally, there will be a brief
observation about sex offenders.

MOTHERS AND INCEST

I was surprised by Rachel Lev-Wiesel’s article, “Intergenerational

Transmission of Sexual Abuse? Motherhood in the Shadow of Incest”
in Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 15(2). I thought that theories that
blame mothers for their children’s incest had lost currency and cre-
dence. It is not accidental that the author has to reach far back into the
history of clinical sexual abuse literature to find an article to support a
theory of the instrumental role of mothers in the sexual abuse of their

Kathleen Coulborn Faller, PhD, ACSW, is Professor of Social Work, and Director
of the Family Assessment Clinic at University of Michigan. She is the author of seven
books and over 70 articles. Currently, she is Principal Investigator of the Child Welfare
Supervisors’ Training Grant and the Program on the Recruitment and Retention of
Child Welfare Workers, funded by the US Children’s Bureau. She is also Principal In-
vestigator of the Hasbro Early Assessment Program.
Address correspondence to: Dr. Kathleen Coulborn Faller, PhD, ACSW, Professor,
School of Social Work, University of Michigan, 1080 South University Avenue, Ann
Arbor, MI 48109-1106 (E-mail: kcfaller@umich.edu).
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, Vol. 16(1) 2007
Available online at http://jcsa.haworthpress.com
© 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 129
130 JOURNAL OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

daughters (Sarles, 1975). The Sarles article refers to literature on incest

from the early 1900s to the 1950s and includes two case studies. Merely
two case studies, incidentally, do not demonstrate mother’s pivotal role
in the incest. The second and more recent article (DeYoung, 1994) cited
to support a view that “mothers essentially set up their daughters to ac-
cept the mothers’ sexual advances” (presumably from the fathers:
Lev-Wiesel, JCSA 15(2) pp. 75-101) offers no support whatsoever for
that view. It is a qualitative study of 20 mothers who were court-ordered
into sexual abuse treatment along with their husbands and daughters.
DeYoung’s article (1994) addresses conflict between wife and mother
roles and coping styles among these women. It notes the variability in
coping styles and its impact on the duration and intrusiveness of sexual
abuse. The article challenges the theory of the “incestugenic” mother.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, both clinical work and research
(e.g., Finkelhor, 1979; Meiselman, 1978; Russell, 1978; Sgroi, 1982)
began to overturn theories that place responsibility for incest on moth-
ers (e.g., Justice & Justice, 1980; Lustig, Dresser, Spellman, & Murray,
1966; Walters, 1975). Some of the important works that virtually elimi-
nated mothers’ role as an issue in understanding sexual abuse dynamics
will be highlighted.
In 1981, Judith Herman published her groundbreaking volume, Father-
Daughter Incest, which called into question the two common explana-
tions for incest, the “seductive daughter” and the “collusive mother,”
and argued that patriarchy is at the root of incest, not mothers and
daughters. Her book employs wide-ranging sources, including English
literature, literary criticism, the works of Freud and his colleagues, the-
oretical writings on incest, the existing research, and case examples
found in print and in her practice. Herman asserted incest is trivialized
and minimized because incest is entwined with male hegemony. Twenty
years later, in the Afterword of the second edition of Father-Daughter
Incest (Herman, 2000), she notes there is a greater appreciation of the
extent of the problem of incest and more generally of sexual abuse.
However, she also states that attempts to undermine a feminist theory of
incest continue. These include pointing out that some women also sexu-
ally abuse their children and that boys are victims as well, both of which
are true. Nevertheless, Herman believes patriarchy and a feminist anal-
ysis still offer the most complete explanation for incest and other forms
of abuse and violence against women and children.
Similarly in 1986, Conte, a pioneer in the field of sexual abuse re-
search and practice, summarized existing research, and called into ques-
tion theories that place responsibility for incest on mothers and family
 Commentaries 131

dynamics. He proposed a research agenda that took into account the full
spectrum of situations in which sexual abuse occurs.
Mother-blaming theories were also challenged by early research on
sexual offenders. Abel, Becker, Cunningham-Rathner, and Mittelman
(1988), in the first major study of non-incarcerated sex offenders, made
the following observations about incest fathers: The mean age of sexual
abuse onset for incestuous fathers was 18 (i.e., they began sexually abus-
ing as adolescents, not as adults and fathers), and half of incest fathers
also sexually abused children outside the family.
Landmark studies of large population samples also indirectly under-
mined the theory of the incestugenic mother (Finkelhor, 1979; Russell,
1978; Wyatt, 1985). Respondents to these studies reported extrafamilial
as well as intrafamilial sexual abuse. Finkelhor’s (1979) study is illus-
trative. He collected data from 796 students from six New England
colleges and universities. He reported a sexual victimization rate for fe-
male college student respondents of 19.2%, but only 43% of offenders
were family members. Male respondents, who were sexually abused at
a rate of 8.6%, describe only 17% of abusers as family members. No
males in the sample reported being sexually abused by a father; five fe-
males reported sexual abuse by a father, and two by a stepfather. These
findings make it difficult to sustain a comprehensive explanation for
sexual abuse that makes the victim’s mother the centerpiece.
Research on mothers of victims of sexual abuse (e.g., Bolen & Lamb,
2002; Bolen, Lamb, & Gradante, 1997; Heriot, 1996; Plummer, 2004)
provides a more nuanced and less pathologizing understanding of moth-
ers of victims than does the work of Lev-Wiesel. Faller (1988) noted a
spectrum of maternal responses to intrafamilial sexual abuse based on the
mother’s relationship with the offender. Everson et al. (1990) developed
an instrument that measured maternal responses, the Parental Response to
Incest Disclosure (PRIDS), dividing response into belief, emotional sup-
port, and protective action. This measure takes into account that parents
can be protective even if they do not know if the child’s statements are
true. Findings on this measure predicted whether children remained in the
family or were removed from the home. Bolen and colleagues (Bolen &
Lamb, 2002; Bolen et al., 1997) are engaged in a line of research, using
an instrument called the Needs-Based Assessment of Parental Support
(NAPS). The underlying theory of the NAPS is that parental responses
should be conceptualized according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:
(1) Meeting the child’s needs for food, clothing, and shelter; (2) meeting
the child’s needs for safety; (3) meeting the child’s emotional needs; and
(4) meeting the child’s needs for maintaining a good sense of self. This
132 JOURNAL OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

conceptualization, while taking into account variations in parental reac-

tion, avoids blaming the mother and incorporates factors that can impede
her protective capacity.
With regard to research findings on the role of mothers’ own sexual
victimization in her child’s experience, other research fails to support
Lev-Wiesel’s qualitative findings. Two literature reviews of predictors of
maternal response to sexual abuse (Bolen & Lamb, 2002; Elliott &
Carnes, 2001) do not find mother’s history of sexual abuse associated
with lack of support for the victim. Elliott and Carnes report that the
one study that does show a relationship finds victimization mothers
more supportive than mothers without a history of victimization.
Deblinger, Stauffer, and Landsberg (1994), who are involved with in-
tervention research with mothers and their children, also found no
relationship between maternal history sexual abuse and maternal sup-
port. Moreover, many researchers would argue that the proportion of
women who are sexually abused is so high that such a history does not
reliably predict their children being sexually victimized, although it
does predict other sequelae (Berliner & Elliott, 2002; Russell, 1986;
Wyatt, 1985; Wyatt & Mickey, 1988).

METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES

A careful read of Lev-Wiesel raises questions about its methodology.

First of all, the author does not tell readers how the “participants” (mothers
of victims) were selected. We do not know what proportion of mothers,
seen by the five clinicians who provided information for the study, had
histories of sexual abuse or whether all with a history were selected for
this study.
Second, the author had an opportunity to listen to a variety of voices
in this study. This is one of the strengths of qualitative research. But the
author does not seem to have taken advantage of this opportunity. Lev-
Wiesel had available the voices of the five therapists who were asked to
give narrations about their clients (mothers of victims of sexual abuse),
the voices of 19 of the 24 women as reflected in their diaries, as well as
the case records of these women, including narrative transcriptions of
therapy sessions. But the loudest voice in the article is Lev-Wiesel’s
own voice. I will describe why I think this is so.
This article is supposed to be based on a textual analysis of stories the
therapists told about their clients, the 19 diaries of mothers that were
available to the researchers, and the case records. Lev-Wiesel describes
 Commentaries 133

herself and a research assistant independently reading and re-reading 10

diaries, developing categories, coding all of the diaries, and re-testing
the analysis. (The coding of the therapists’ stories about their clients and
the other case materials are not discussed.) The following categories
were used in the coding:
1. Cognitive-rationale (sic) explanations regarding the abuse of her
child and her own experiences of abuse.
2. Emotional reactions to the abuse of her child and herself.
3. Emotional reaction to the perpetrators of the abuse of her child
and the abuse of herself.
4. Cognitive-rationale (sic) explanations regarding the behavior of
the perpetrators of abuse toward herself and her child.
5. The degree of separation (does this mean differentiation or disso-
ciation?) between the child’s experiences and her own childhood
experiences.
6. Her perception of her maternal role and actual maternal behavior
prior to and subsequent to knowledge of the abuse of her child.
Having described the process of coding, at least as it relates to the 19
diaries, this coding is evidently abandoned in favor of four types of moth-
ering styles proposed by the author. I conclude that the coding system is
abandoned based on the lack of reliance on the information from the six
codes in the description of the four types of mothers:
1. The unaware mother (9)
2. The unwitting accomplice (8)
3. The enabler (2)
4. The common fate mother (4)
Moreover, the conclusion that the coding categories are irrelevant is re-
inforced by the analysis that follows each case example. It does not rely on
the coding but rather object relations theory, ego-psychology, Axis II diag-
nostic categories, and one aspect of trauma theory (dissociation).
A third issue is that the author does not appear to stick close to the
data. A number of the conclusions in the analyses are not supported by
the data presented. An example involves the first mother described. She
had vigilantly protected her daughter from sexual abuse by her husband.
When her son was 26, she learned that her husband had sexually abused
him for years. Lev-Wiesel hypothesizes that the mother failed to notice
her husband was sexually interested in boys because she denied early
134 JOURNAL OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

signs of this interest when she chose him as a mate. Not only does the
case material lack any description of such signs, but many experts
would state there are not necessarily such signs (e.g., Herman, 2000).
One more example from the mother type was an “enabler.” Lev-Wiesel
states that in order for this mother to feel stronger, the closest and most
threatening person, her daughter, was sacrificed. Since the mother is not
described as feeling weak and the child does not implicate her mother in
her abuse, this opinion is somewhat bewildering.
Finally, in terms of the methodology, most of the cases in the study do
not appear in the results. Other than the examples used to illustrate the
four case types, there are brief references to two other cases. And, as al-
ready noted, all of the material appears to come from the mothers’ diaries.
In describing the advantages of conducting a qualitative study, Trochim
(2000) identifies one as an opportunity to obtain a deep understanding of
issues. I’m afraid Lev-Wiesel did not make full use of her many data
sources. Rather she imposed her own pre-conceived and pathologizing
understanding on the lives of the women in her study.

WHERE ARE THE SEX OFFENDERS?

Finally, this article is utterly silent about the role played by the offend-
ers, that is, the men who sexually abused both the mothers and their
children. They committed the sexual abuse, not the mothers. A theory
and analysis that do not take into account their motives, manipulations,
and maneuvers are not useful. Sex offenders are not the helpless victims
of their partners or of family dynamics.

REFERENCES
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Bolen, R. & Lamb, L. (2002). Ambivalence of nonoffending guardians after child sex-
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 Commentaries 135

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