NCJ Number
161751
Journal
Albany Law Review Volume: 58 Issue: 4 Dated: (1995) Pages: 1087-1107
Date Published
1995
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article concerns the failure of the American legal system to protect mothers and children from intrafamilial violence, and the need to create a legal paradigm that will ensure that protection.
Abstract
There exists in American society a set of beliefs that distinguish the good mother from the bad, the neglectful from the concerned. In the lexicon of motherhood, the assertion of self is intrinsically bad. Abuse and neglect statutes have codified these beliefs into a system of laws that punishes mothers and fails to protect children from abusive fathers or paramours. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the application of child protective statutes in cases where states have brought charges against abused mothers, via the theory of failure to protect, for failing to keep the abuse to themselves. Society is holding mothers accountable for conduct in which they did not participate, conduct that, until recently, was socially permissible and that authorities are still loath to stop. The first step in reshaping the battered woman paradigm is to refocus the inquiry from the abused mother's behavior to the assailant's coercive conduct. This expands the limited definition of abuse to encompass forms of intimidation and control that include psychological and economic as well as physical coercion. Essential to protection of children within the family is the reformation of child protective statutes, in part by incorporating mother abuse into those statutes. In transforming current protective laws we can impose a legal standard that addresses the best interest of families, specifically the non-abusive persons within the family. We should contextualize the abuse of mothers in a way that neither minimizes the violence nor uses it to penalize. Footnotes