The following study adds to research that examines child custody cases involving a history of interpersonal violence. This study contributes to past research by providing qualitative accounts of women's experiences with intimate partner violence prior to custody loss, institutional abuse at the hands of the family court, and abuse experienced after custody loss. Data come from a convenience sample of 16 noncustodial mothers from northeastern Ohio. Findings support past research, which finds corruption, denial of due process, and gender bias in the family court system. Policy recommendations are made and future research directions suggested.

When Battered Mothers Lose Custody: A Qualitative Study of Abuse at Home and in the Courts

The issue of reproduction as a key site for the social construction and regulation of women has been examined by feminist psychologists and activists campaigning around women’s reproductive bodies in areas such as contraception, abortion, infertility treatment, pregnancy and childbirth, and the menopause. The articles in this Special Issue consider some of the ways in which reproduction shapes women’s lives and subjectivities, and some of the issues thus raised for feminist and psychological theorizing of women. The articles focus particularly on motherhood constituted as an essential identity for women and the ways in which women negotiate becoming or not becoming mothers, drawing on the research and commentary of women who are voluntarily childless (Morell, Wager), and who want children but can’t have them (Ulrich and Weatherall); women’s embodied subjectivities and the ways in which conception, pregnancy and childbirth are theorized and managed (Marshall and Woollett, Rudolfsdottir, and reviews of books by Meyer, Ragone, and Petchesky and Judd); and tensions between motherhood constituted as normal and natural for all women and as problematic for women deemed not to be the ‘right’ women or in the ‘right’ circumstances (Burns, Lee, Marshall and Woollett).

Reproduction, Women’s Lives and Subjectivities

Notions of motherhood have been shaped by a Western ideology that encourages mothers to intensively mother their children, selflessly indulging in their child's every want and need. Failure to adhere to such criteria results in the label of “bad” mother. This understanding of motherhood has been viewed through a White, middle-class, heterosexual lens, limiting our ability to see the diversity of women's lives. In an effort to encourage exploration of women's nuanced experiences, feminist scholars have begun to explore marginalized mothers. This article adds to this research, drawing attention to noncustodial mothers. Because they do not live with their children on a full-time basis, noncustodial mothers deviate from the ideology of the “good mother,” providing an opportunity to explore the navigation of motherhood from a distance. Through qualitative interviews with 16 noncustodial mothers, strategies of resistance and accommodation of the cultural ideal emerge.

Mothering From a Distance

In this paper, which is based on a larger research study, I address the research question: How is 'the family' constructed and talked about in intercultural and intracultural systemic clinical sessions? I use the qualitative research method of discourse analysis to analyse transcripts from eleven intercultural and intracultural video-taped family therapy sessions. The participants in the research study were South Asian and White British clinicians and families. Through discourse analysis, I identified the 'Outsider–Insider discourse of family life' to describe the different ways in which families define the boundaries around 'the family'. The findings suggest that although 'the family' was constructed differently by South Asian and White British families, clinicians – regardless of whether they were working interculturally or intraculturally – privileged a discourse of 'the family' as a two-generation, two-parent unit. The theoretical, clinical and training implication of this finding will be discussed.

Constructing 'the family' across culture

This qualitative study examined the alienated mothers' experience of motherhood. Data were collected by in-depth semi-structured interviews with 10 women whose children refused any contact with them. Findings revealed one main theme, ‘Merging vs. detachment’, consisting of four subthemes or motifs in these women's narratives: (i) marriage as an illusion of salvation from an abusive home; (ii) giving birth to a child as compensation for chaotic childhood experiences; (iii) husband exploiting and abusing their sense of failing motherhood; and (iv) the husband and mother-in-law expelling the mother. These findings were interpreted within the framework of Bowen's theory. The interpretation suggests that impairment in the mothers' and ex-husbands' differentiation of the self is manifest in the shattered mother–child relations and in the mothers' loss of their children in the struggle with their mothers-in-law. Implications for practice are included.

The experience of motherhood for alienated mothers

The Feminism & Psychology Undergraduate Prize 1995: Prizewinning Entry No-Woman's Land: The Story of Non-Custodial Mothers

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The Feminism & Psychology Undergraduate Prize 1995: Prizewinning Entry No-Woman's Land: The Story of Non-Custodial Mothers