Dynamic changes in mother-child relationship in the context of intimate partner violence

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an alarming global problem attacking and damaging the women, children who witnessed it and the mother-child relationship. Rebuilding and restrengthening the mother-child relationship is critical to support the mothers’ and children’s recovery at the post-separation stage. Previous studies mainly focused on participants’ verbal reports of their explicit relationship involving conscious and verbal communications, the implicit relationship consisting of unconscious and nonverbal interactions remained unexplored. Also, little attention was given to the changes in the relationship due to changes in the context of IPV over time. Moreover, Chinese mothers and children who survived IPV were seldom involved as participants.

This study aimed to involve the Chinese mothers and children to understand their explicit and implicit relationships to explain the changes in their relationships in the context of IPV over time. It led to the development of the “mother-child agency and strengths framework”, which sheds light on the participants’ agency and strengths, without disregarding their victimization and multiple interlocking constraints in the context of IPV. This framework undergirded the selection of the qualitative design and Grounded Theory. Individual interviews were applied to capture the participants’ explicit relationship. An art-based method, Joint Painting Procedure, was used to elicit their implicit relationship. The main study was conducted in a shelter for abused women and their children in Hong Kong. The participants included 13 Chinese mothers and 20 children who survived IPV.

With the participants as collaborators, the integrated model, “Dynamic changes in mother-child relationship in the context of IPV” was developed. This model was grounded in the findings of the participants’ characteristics, their explicit and implicit relationships, and the changes in the context of IPV. The grounded integration provides a broad picture, new perspective and new dimension to illustrate that the context, mothers and children are collectively contributing to the changes in mother-child relationship. Firstly, the participants’ intersecting social identities and backgrounds show that IPV is an intersectional social problem. Secondly, the process of dynamic changes in the explicit relationship provides a broad picture and new perspective to understand that the relationship and context of IPV are dynamic and changing over time, instead of static. Thirdly, the implicit relationship provides a new dimension of evidence to substantiate the dynamic, bidirectional and reciprocal nature of the relationship. The model also highlights the explicit and implicit resources supporting the mothers and children alongside their experiences. Based on these findings, a new working approach is recommended to focus on strengthening the dyadic mother-child relationship, especially using the dyadic art-based approach. It also emphasizes discovering explicit and implicit resources, in particular, the traditional Chinese values and belief that helped the participants cope effectively with their IPV experiences and move forward in their new lives.

This study asserted the mothers’ and children’s perspectives, and generated new knowledge to understand the dynamic changes in mother-child relationship in the context of IPV. This has implications for theories related to IPV and mother-child relationship, clinical practices, related social policies and research methods in this area. (498 words)