Abstract
We examined how men in treatment for intimate partner violence and non-violent men described the mother of their child, and their co-parenting. We interviewed six cohabiting and five non-cohabiting fathers in treatment for intimate partner violence (IPV), and six non-violent fathers on their everyday-life experience of being a father. We performed a theory driven thematic analysis, using ‘we-ness’ as an organising concept. In contrast to non-violent fathers, partner-violent fathers’ descriptions of the co-parenting relationship lacked reference to mutuality, respect and an understanding of family dynamics. Partner-violent fathers tended to present the child’s mother negatively, with non-cohabiting fathers using more categorically negative characteristics. Men in IPV treatment also described more undermining co-parenting behaviours. Therapeutic interventions for men who have used IPV should focus on developing basic perspective-taking skills towards their (ex-)partner and child. With men who are cohabiting, couple sessions on co-parenting should be considered. In separated couples, this work may be more safely conducted individually. The effects of IPV on co-parenting, and through co-parenting on child development, should routinely be explored in therapy.
Key messages
Men who have used IPV exhibit little reciprocity and understanding of family dynamics, and how these may affect children’s development.
Interventions for partner-violent men who have contact with their children should include a focus on parenting and co-parenting, building basic co-parenting skills.
Male-to-female intimate partner violence (IPV) is a major public health concern worldwide, with a wide range of negative mental and somatic health consequences for women and children. Living with interparental violence puts especially young children at risk of developing mental health problems (Stover et al, 2017). Children are affected by male-to-female IPV in the home directly as they are at high risk of physical child abuse (Finkelhor et al, 2009), and indirectly through reduced maternal care (Levendovsky et al, 2018). Men who use IPV tend to have shortcomings as caregivers, as they often exhibit negative, shallow and inflexible mental representations of children’s intentions and feelings (Francis and Wolfe, 2007; Stover and Kiselica, 2014; Mohupt et al, 2020) and poor modelling of affect regulation and poor regulation of children’s affect (Maliken and Katz, 2013; Mohaupt et al, 2020). Similarly, it has been theorised (Fonagy, 1999) and demonstrated (Covell et al, 2007) that men who use IPV, often have problems with empathically relating to their partner.
It has consistently been found that men’s parenting compared to women’s is more affected by the quality of the interparental relationship (Sturge-Apple et al, 2006; Cowan et al, 2019). Aggressive interparental conflict correlates with harsher parenting, lax control, and less parental support (Krishnakumar and Buehler, 2000). Longitudinal studies found that men’s insecurity in the adult relationship mediated the association between interparental conflict and controlling and insensitive fathering. Men’s increased attachment security and reduced anxiety and depression following intervention mediated the effect of less couple conflict on more sensitive fathering (Davies et al, 2009; Cowan et al, 2019).
Partner-violent men often exhibit hostility, dismissiveness and evasion of conflict when talking about their co-parenting, in addition to being child- rather than family-focused and feeling undermined by the child’s mother (Stover and Spink, 2012; Scott et al, 2018; Stover and Ferrel, 2019). Divorced partner-violent men tend to describe their ex-partner negatively and hold her responsible for co-parenting problems (Thompson-Walsh et al, 2018).
The couple relationship and co-parenting have been highlighted as main areas for intervention for fathers who have used IPV (Scott et al, 2018; Cowan and Cowan, 2019). Co-parenting is a central aspect of the couple relationship, with documented effects on child development (Krishnakumar and Buehler, 2000; Cummings and Davies, 2010). In supportive co-parenting couples, cooperation is characterised by respect and loyalty between parents, there is high overlap between parents regarding agreement on childrearing goals, there is clear triangulation between parents and child(ren), as parents act as a team, and children are not involved in adult conflict. In contrast, undermining co-parenting is characterised by disrespecting the other parent, high divergence regarding childrearing goals, the formation of child–parent alliances that exclude the other parent, and children are involved in conflict (Teuber and Pinquart, 2010).
While men in voluntary IPV treatment often have regular contact with their children (Stover and Kiselica, 2014; Mohaupt and Duckert, 2016), there has been little research on how these men experience the impact of the couple relationship on their parenting (Scott et al, 2018). In this article, we examined how partner-violent and non-violent men described their relationship to the mother of their children, and co-parenting. We hypothesised that there would be differences in these descriptions based on whether the informants were in IPV therapy, and whether they were cohabiting with the child and the child’s mother or not. We expected men in IPV treatment to describe their co-parenting as more undermining than non-violent fathers. Our research question was: what characterises descriptions of co-parenting in violent cohabiting, violent non-cohabiting, and non-violent fathers?
Method
The present article is part of the qualitative strand of a mixed-methods study using an emergent embedded quan–QUAL design (Onwuegbuzie and Collins, 2007). This means that we collected qualitative and quantitative data in parallel, that the qualitative analyses were conducted after, and guided by the quantitative findings, and that the qualitative analyses were given more weight in the study (Creswell and Plano, 2011).
Procedure
For the main study, we recruited a convenience sample of 36 participants from a western Norwegian office of Alternative to Violence (ATV), a national non-governmental organisation offering psychotherapy for adults who use IPV. All men received violence-focused, trauma-informed cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy provided by clinical psychologists and family therapists. The therapeutic model did not conceptualise the men’s use of violence as linked to underlying mental health issues beyond their control. Therapy focused on men ending violent behaviour and accepting accountability for their use of violence (Askeland and Råkil, 2017).
We assessed parental reflective functioning (RF) and screened for types and scope of violence toward partner and children. Parental RF refers to parents’ ability to understand their children’s behaviour as based on intentions, feelings and beliefs (Slade et al, 2003). We also assessed alcohol use (AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test)) (Babor et al, 2001), substance use (DUDIT (Drug Use Disorders Identification Test)) (Berman et al, 2007), and trauma history including experiences of abuse and neglect from parents (TEC (traumatic experiences checklist)) (Nijenhuis et al, 2002). Inclusion criteria were being in treatment for IPV, and regular contact no less than twice a month with a biological child. Exclusion criteria were cases demanding acute psychiatric care and alcohol or substance dependency according to ICD-10 (WHO, 1992).
All informants were given written and oral information that participation or declining participation would not affect their therapy, collaboration with other services, or possible custody issues. To guarantee the informants’ anonymity we deidentified names and age of the informants, their family members, and geographical references in the transcripts. Audio files were erased after transcriptions were checked for accuracy. We randomly changed identifiable specifics such as child gender in some illustrational quotes. The study was approved by the Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics.
Sample characteristics
Initial quantitative analyses provided descriptive statistics for a sample of Norwegian men in treatment for IPV (Mohaupt and Duckert, 2016). These analyses showed that cohabiting fathers were older, reported less alcohol and substance use, less single and complex trauma experience, and scored higher on parental mentalising than the non-cohabiting fathers (see Table 1). Based on these quantitative findings we selected 11 clinical cases for the present qualitative analysis. Six men were cohabiting, and five men were living separated from the child and the child’s mother. These 11 cases represented the diversity (high, midrange and low scores) of the entire clinical sample’s scores on parental RF, alcohol- and substance-use patterns, and trauma history. articipants came from urban and rural communities. Informants were asked to talk about their relationship to one of their children, whom we termed ‘focus child’. Six focus children were boys, five were girls.
Overall IPV sample (N = 36) divided by cohabiting status
| Non-cohabiting (N = 15) | Cohabiting (N = 21) | Possible range | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean | Range | % at risk | Mean | Range | % at risk | ||
| Age (years) | 32.8 | 22–52 | 38.2 | 26–54 | |||
| AUDIT (risk of problematic alcohol use ≥ 7) | 9.6 | 1–16 | 73 | 6.4 | 0–25 | 33 | 0–40 |
| DUDIT (risk of substance abuse ≥ 6) | 2.7 | 0–19 | 13.3 | 0.4 | 0–7 | 4 | 0–44 |
| RF (adequate RF ≥ 5) | 3.3 | 2–5 | 93 | 3.7 | 2–6 | 80 | –1–9 |
| TEC Traumatic incidents lifetime, N | 8.8 | 0–14 | 6.7 | 1–15 | 0–29 | ||
| TEC Relational trauma compound score | 15.9 | 0–30 | 15.0 | 0–45 | 0–69 | ||
Sample of non-violent men
We recruited a sample of six non-violent fathers by approaching public workplaces. We asked for voluntary participants for a non-violent comparison group in a study on fathering in the context of IPV. To ensure as best as possible that participants in the comparison group did not have a history of intimate partner violence, we contacted their spouses by phone. All spouses denied having experienced any form of violence from their partner. In this group, three focus children were boys and three were girls, and fathers were living together with the focus child’s mother. The non-violent fathers were older, reported lower alcohol and substance use, less single and complex traumatisation, and scored higher on parental mentalising compared to men in the clinical sample (see Table 2).
Descriptive statistics for participants
| NC IPV (N = 6) | CH IPV (N = 5) | NV (N = 6) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean | Range | Mean | Range | Mean | Range | Possible range | |
| Age | 28.7 | 22–36 | 38.0 | 33–46 | 39.1 | 33–47 | |
| Education (total in years) | 11.5 | 9–16 | 15.4 | 12–19 | 16.0 | 13–18 | |
| AUDIT (risk of problematic alcohol use ≥ 7) | 10.8 | 7–11 | 5.8 | 3–10 | 3.5 | 0–5 | 0–40 |
| DUDIT (risk of substance abuse ≥ 6) | 4.8 | 0–19 | 1.4 | 0–7 | 0.0 | – | 0–44 |
| TEC total | 11.2 | 9–12 | 4.2 | 1–10 | 4.0 | 2–6 | 0–29 |
| TEC relational trauma compound | 24.2 | 18–36 | 8.8 | 0–24 | 1.8 | 0–8 | 0–69 |
| PDI RF (adequate RF ≥ 5) | 3.3 | 2–5 | 4.2 | 3–6 | 5.2 | 4–7 | –1–9 |
| Age child (in years) | 4.3 | 2–8 | 3.8 | 2–8 | 5.0 | 3–9 | |
Note:
NC IPV: Non-cohabiting men in treatment for IPV
CH IPV: Cohabiting men in treatment for IPV
NV: Non-violent men
Interview
The Parent Development Interview- Revised (PDI-R2) (Slade et al, 2003) is a semi-structured interview with a parent on the experience of their relationship to one child. We consider the PDI-R2 suitable for a qualitative approach since its questions and probes are open and elicit the interviewee’s everyday-life experience of parenting (Can you describe an instance during the past two weeks where you were angry as a parent? How do you think Child felt then; What gives you most joy in being a parent? What gives you most pain and difficulty being a parent?). Interviews lasted between 60 and 90 minutes and were conducted in one sitting by the first author or one of five other trained therapists. Interviewers were clinicians with experience from therapy with men who use IPV who did not know the participants they interviewed. Two research assistants transcribed the audio files verbatim. The first author translated the transcripts into English.
Analytic strategy
We performed a comparative thematic analysis (Clarke et al, 2015), as we contrasted two samples’ descriptions on the same topic. This approach was used to highlight differences, and to underline the co-parenting challenges men in IPV treatment presented, and we do not claim generalisability of the findings. The analysis was guided by theory and research on co-parenting and IPV perpetration and victimisation. Since we analysed the data as descriptive accounts that reflected the informants’ experience of reality but interpreted these accounts as context-dependent (that is, as appearing within an IPV context or not), our methodological approach was contextualist. The broader context for the study was fathering in Norway, where policies traditionally have been in favour of gender equality (Lamb, 2013).
To increase rigour and reliability, and to reduce bias, we used several means of triangulation in this study. We combined different theoretical perspectives (psychological theories on domestic violence and family systems theory), data sources (a clinical and a non-clinical sample), and methods (quantitative and qualitative). The first author formulated initial codes based on recurring themes across groups. These initial codes were labelled mutuality, rigidity, safety, empathy and respect. We used the construct ‘we-ness’ (Gildersleeve et al, 2017) to organise further analyses. ‘We-ness’ refers to intimate partners’ sense of holding a couple identity (Gildersleeve et al, 2017), indicating a mindset that values reciprocity and mutuality in the couple relationship (Topcu-Uzer et al, 2020). We coded data that described aspects of we-ness (security, empathy, respect, acceptance, pleasure, humour, shared meaning and vision) within the clinical and non-clinical samples. Pleasure and humour were discarded due to the lack of data describing these codes. Both authors reflected on the remaining codes and formulated themes and subthemes.
Findings
We organised the findings section under three headings: 1) Positive and negative we-ness, 2) Perceptions of and cooperation with the child’s mother, and 3) Perceptions of the father’s own role and competency. We tagged quotes by the following abbreviations: IPV CH stands for clinical sample, cohabiting. IPV NC stands for clinical sample, non-cohabiting. NV stands for non-clinical sample.
Theme 1: Positive and negative we-ness
All informants included the child’s mother in their accounts of the father–child relationship. Men in IPV treatment reported problems in the adult relationship, and often referred to their partner as difficult. Non-violent fathers often used the term ‘we’ when asked to describe their fathering, presenting it as incorporated within the co-parenting relationship.
The idea of family as ‘we’
I was proud like a peacock when I walked with the two beautiful kids in the pram, people look. Especially cool to be just me taking care of two kids, of course I am proud – almost want to have a pedestal to show off the kids. (CH IPV 3)
When I sit there, each of my sons in one arm and my wife comes in and says: ‘I want to take a picture of this’, or we exchange looks and I show her, ‘here is a proud father with two beautiful sons’, that is enough for me, I don’t need more than that. (NV 1)
Negative we-ness
Me and my wife come from dysfunctional families. That has affected me. And what has happened with my wife has affected her. And it worries me, what we do to Child. But also, he needs to know that he can’t hit his Dad. So, it needs to be balanced, and I don’t get so often mad with the kids… but the wife gets mad. (CH IPV 5)
Notably, this informant ended with portraying his partner as the less capable parent when it came to regulating anger vis-à-vis the children. These quotes illustrate how men in IPV treatment tended to describe co-parenting as negative. They acknowledged their anger as contributing to that, but also described anger and aggression as a characteristic they shared with their partner. None of the informants reflected on how episodes of IPV may have contributed to their partners’ anger.
Theme 2: Perceptions of and cooperation with the child’s mother
All informants described how their relationship with the child’s mother impacted on their fathering. There were differences between men in IPV treatment and non-violent men regarding their perceptions of the child’s mother, and the co-parenting relationship.
Acceptance and feeling accepted
Child does not want to go to bed […] and I get so angry and fed up that I scare her into bed, really angry […] you feel that you are shaking. I tell my wife […] that I am angry and shameful, feel stupid […], but it is practically to make her take over. (CH IPV 1)
This quote illustrates how some fathers’ difficulties in controlling their aggression reinforced their experience of being the less competent parent compared to the mother. However, this belief also seemed to be incongruent with how the informants wanted to act – and be perceived as – fathers. They often reported how they felt that the child’s mother controlled the father’s parenting efforts. ‘The things I actually do alright – she decides whether she thinks it should have been done differently. All the time these control-checks regarding if things are being done the right way, and that creates insecurity’ (CH IPV1). This quote illustrates how maternal gatekeeping (Schoppe-Sullivan et al, 2008) may be common in couples where men have used IPV. In the clinical sample, this seemed to contribute to feelings of inadequacy as fathers, which in turn was related to aggression. They did not reflect on how their use of violence might have contributed to their partners’ need to keep an eye on their parenting.
It was a shit-day because of a very bad start with Child, and I thought: ‘Can I do something about this?’ So, I discussed with my wife, and I found out, or we found out together – I had thought that I talk to Child after dinner when things were stable. We talked about this, and we made peace and gave each other a hug afterward. (NV 1)
Especially when I am alone, my wife is out […] if something is not settled, I can’t calm down, I must put down what I am doing and try to find out what I did wrong and what I can do differently and need to find the so-called soft values that I have been focusing on more after I got kids, and which my wife has so much of. (NV 2)
This quote illustrates how fathers in the non-clinical sample actively used critical self-evaluation to improve and stabilise their relationship to their children. These findings reflect research on how men’s emotional safety in their relationship to their child’s mother affects their emotional availability as fathers (Sturge-Apple et al, 2006; Davies et al, 2009).
Shared meaning and vision
My wife will spend more time listening to Child, I just trump through, look at the clock, say: ‘We must leave now.’ And of course, there is more crying from the kid, but we don’t risk getting late to kindergarten or work. And when I am resolute, I don’t listen to her suggestions […] according to my wife I am rigid – maybe. I have decided on one thing and pull it through. (CH IPV 3)
Child shouts because she wants me to participate. ‘Look at me’ or ‘Play with me’, and it feels good to be counted in but also a bit nagging […] The worst is when my wife points that out, ‘Listen, put away the Ipad’, like, admonishing. (CH IPV 3)
We are two adults […] I think we complement each other. Me and my wife are different characters, and we are man and woman, and the kids have two to relate to, and there is an interaction throughout the family, so I feel that my need to have someone to share and confer with when there is trouble in childrearing, is met. (NV 1)
I can compromise, which means that they can stay up 10–15 minutes longer. Or they can have dessert even when I had not planned that […] If I had been rock-hard, they wouldn’t have done that, but I am not, and neither is my wife, but we are hard enough to keep a sense of us being the ones who decide. It is a world of compromises all the time, and there are negotiations between my kids and me every day. (NV 1)
This quote illustrates the association between parents’ adherence to gender equality and fathers’ emotional responsiveness to their children (Matta and Knudson-Martin, 2006).
Devaluing the child’s mother
I know that Child misses me, and the woman over there in that house has used me as an example of a bad father. She has been the gasoline can next to the fire […] I had him at the hospital, in the beginning, she had a caesarean section. I had him for five hours before he got to see the mother, had to give him milk and such shit. (NC IPV 3)
The mother has taken a complete grip on Child. She directs all her free-time activities, decides what school Child goes to. Tells me all the time that she should have seen to it to have sole parental rights for Child. She creates an abyss between us. (CH IPV 2)
She sends messages, like ‘the kids don’t want to see you’. And when I eventually get to see them, they run into my arms – which just illustrates the ugly game that has been played […] I felt powerless and desperate. And anger. I thought about killing her and of kidnapping. Knew exactly how I would have done it. But always came back to that they needed their mother. That they can’t live on the run. (NC IPV 1)
These quotes illustrate how some men in IPV treatment experienced powerlessness as parents and contemplated power assertion. These informants did not seem to experience their aggression toward the children’s mother as a challenge to the relationship with their children.
(Dis-)respecting the child’s mother
I was together with the crazy one I got the last kid with for 2 years. This mother, I don’t like her. I feel a bit guilty because I haven’t been around the past year. I’ll meet the kid. What can you do – even if you hate the mother, it is your kid. (NC IPV 2)
Yes, Child has felt rejected, and that is definitely a conscious choice from me. If she feels hurt from her mum for something or has got a no for something I am on mum’s team, because we must be consequential. She doesn’t get comfort from me because she must understand that what mum says is equally important. (NV 6)
In sum, these quotes illustrate how safe co-parenting is based on the parents acting as a team, respecting each other (Teuber and Pinquart, 2010). Also, they support research describing how men’s parenting deteriorates with increased couple conflict, and how paternal involvement increases with mothers’ marital satisfaction (Cummings and Davies, 2010).
Theme 3: Fathers’ perceptions of their role and caregiving competency
Fathers in the clinical sample seemed to privatise the father–child relationship, while non-violent men contextualised it within family dynamics. Accordingly, fathers in IPV treatment reported examples of excluding the child’s mother.
Exclusive triangulation
It is after bedtime, and we have put her to bed, and then I go to Child after half an hour, an hour, and ask if she wants to come out and watch TV, and obviously, then we are best friends, she leans into me and doesn’t say a word […] this is an example of Child feeling that I am being really nice with her. (CH IPV 4)
With me, I don’t find she has any problems, maybe I just don’t turn things into problems, maybe I am a little too nice when it comes to letting her have her way. But at home with her mother, she struggles a lot with falling asleep and stuff. (NC IPV 4)
This quote illustrates how men who had limited visitation with their children ascribed the child’s emotional problems to the mother–child relationship and did not consider that the child may have had reactions after visitation. None of these informants reflected on the possibility that the child might experience contact with the father also as stressful. In contrast, non-violent fathers typically described situations that involved both parents and the child: ‘She is most comfortable doing things on her own when both Mum and Dad are home and in the same room with her’ (NV 6). Non-violent fathers tended to convey that they were part of a family system, while men in IPV treatment conveyed that they were in an exclusive relationship with the child. As the next theme shows, this seemed to contribute to IPV fathers’ experience of children’s negative feelings as rejection from the child.
Understanding children’s feelings
The past 18 months it has only been ‘Mommy, not Daddy put me to bed’, and when you combine Child’s temper with the rejection I experience, I like that least about Child. I can often get frustrated and angry, or even mad, too. It is rejection from my own kids […] I feel I am falling short, have nothing to contribute with. (CH IPV 3)
Cohabiting men in treatment for IPV tended to describe a lack of importance as fathers and struggle with accepting the significant role that the mother performs early in the child’s life. Our findings suggest that the fathers’ need for being acknowledged interfered with attending to the child’s experience.
Respecting the child
Child sent a text to her mother, saying that she missed her. So, I took her phone and checked the message. And I confronted her the next day. Totally stupid of me. I said I found it a bit weird that I had been away for 6 weeks, and she is away from her mother one day – and missed her. And Child just explodes and excuses herself. She didn’t go to school, was all in tears. She really felt that she had let me down. (NC IPV 1)
When we have promised something, he remembers that and expects that to happen and that is a commitment for me that we must pull through. We don’t do something else or say that we can do it another time. We respect each other’s expectations. (NV 2)
This example illustrates how fathers in the non-clinical sample experienced their values as family values, and how they talked about their fathering using first person plural. This indicated that they viewed their fathering as tied to their partner’s parenting.
Discussion
We have reported how a sample of men in treatment for IPV and a matched non-violent sample described their child’s mother and the co-parenting relationship. All men described similar themes yet differed in how they described these themes. Men in IPV treatment were to a lesser degree referring to we-ness in the couple relationship. Rather, men in IPV treatment talked negatively about the couple as parents, and their partner, did not explore her perspective, did not reflect on how their behaviour impacted on her, and felt insecure in relation to her. This resonates with studies on how IPV fathers relate to their children (Stover and Kiselica, 2014; Mohaupt et al, 2020), and raises the question of whether men who use IPV have general challenges with mutuality in family relationships.
Partner-violent men described how they focused on being respected, and how they felt insecure as fathers and inferior to their partners as parents. The tension stemming from these experiences seemed to spill over into the father–child relationship. These findings support theory (Cummings and Davies, 2010) and research (Davies et al, 2009; Cowan et al, 2019) on how conflict in the adult relationship affects the father–child relationship negatively. Research suggests that such spillover effects also appear in non-abusive relationships, and typically correlate with less sensitive and more withdrawn fathering (Davies et al, 2009; Cowan et al, 2019). Our findings suggest that with IPV fathers they contribute to father–child aggression. Prior research has demonstrated how men in treatment for IPV have limited understanding of their child’s mental processes (Stover and Kiselica, 2014; Mohaupt et al, 2020) and tend to misrepresent their feelings and emotional expressions (Francis and Wolfe, 2007). Our findings suggest that insecurity in the couple relationship may have further compromised IPV fathers’ limited ability to focus on the child’s experience. We hypothesise that partner-violent men’s difficulties with social information processing may contribute to insensitive parenting, more interparental conflict, and IPV, which may reinforce harsher fathering.
Fathers in the clinical sample tended to describe their (ex-)partners in negative terms and hold them responsible for the child’s problems. This confirms previous findings from research with divorced IPV perpetrators (Thompson-Walsh et al, 2018). It has been theorised that men who adhere to traditional masculinity values demand respect from partner and child while failing to create the emotional trust necessary for mutual respect (Freeman, 2008). This may relate to traditional fathers feeling excluded from the emotional bond between mother and child and attempting to undermine the importance of the mother–child relationship for the child through power-assertion (Freeman, 2008). Previously, we have suggested that men in IPV treatment implicitly adhere to traditional masculinity norms with which they grew up, even when they state that they favour gender equality (Mohaupt et al, 2021). The examples provided by the non-violent group support theory (Doucet, 2013) and research (Matta and Knudson-Martin, 2006) on how practiced gender equality correlates with paternal involvement and emotional responsiveness to the child, and couple satisfaction.
Clinical implications
Men in IPV therapy may understand behavioural control of their aggression as the main goal of intervention. Our findings suggest that they may not understand how undermining the child’s mother as parent is part of IPV. Their feelings of inferiority compared to the mother as caregiver contributed to power assertion in the fathering role. Their failure to take the partner’s perspective and to assess the impact of their own behaviour on her was a recurring theme. Consequently, therapy should explore the (ex-)partner’s perspective, explore men’s feelings of inferiority, and challenge tendencies to blame the child’s mother for his and the child’s problems in the father–child relationship. With cohabiting fathers, couple sessions on co-parenting should routinely be considered.
Limitations
The findings of this article illustrate typical instances of a phenomenon, not general trends within a population. The small sample size prohibits generalisation. The sample consisted of men from a white, Norwegian background, and may fail to address themes related to co-parenting prevalent in other cultures. Men were voluntarily, not court-mandated, in treatment for IPV, and there may be a selection bias as voluntary treatment populations tend to show more insight into their violence problems. Similarly, men in the non-violent sample may have volunteered based on holding beliefs supporting gender equality, and thus not be representative of Norwegian men in general. The lack of multiple researchers analysing the data weakens the validity of the qualitative findings. The authors’ choice to use a descriptive analysis using multiple methods and theoretical perspectives, and different groups of informants was made to counterbalance that. Further, data collection was done at one single point in time, and participants’ contributions may not necessarily reflect stable beliefs.
Conclusions
Men in IPV treatment described little mutuality, here conceptualised as we-ness, when talking about the mother of their child(ren) and co-parenting. This may reflect a general difficulty, as low levels of mutuality and empathic functioning have been described in the father–child relationship with men who use IPV. Further, these fathers may exhibit different attitudes, ideation and behaviour toward their children and their children’s mothers depending on their cohabiting status. This has implications for safety work, as non-cohabiting and cohabiting families may need different safety protocols. Interventions to improve safety and fathering in families after male-to-female IPV should therefore not only be directed toward ending violent behaviour, but equally focus on heightening men’s capacity for mutuality in relation to their (ex-)partner, as non-violent co-parenting was characterised by mutual respect across family relations, men’s acceptance of women’s subjectivity, capacity for teamwork, and ability to accept criticism.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to both the editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which resulted in this final manuscript.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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