Qualitatively Understanding Mother Fault After Childhood Sexual Abuse

Abstract

Socially constructed images of motherhood suggest that a “good” mother is caring, nurturing, and selfless—the perfect maternal figure. When these standards are not met, mother blaming (i.e., assigning fault to mothers) occurs even in child sexual abuse (CSA) cases. We collected 312 open-ended responses in total from 108 community-based participants to understand contextual factors that increase and decrease in mother fault in a CSA-related vignette depicting the mother’s partner as the perpetrator. Thematic analysis revealed five main themes. Three themes were associated with decreased blame: Lack of Overt Knowledge (i.e., the mother had no direct knowledge of the CSA and thus cannot be blamed), Physical Act (i.e., the mother was not the actual perpetrator; only the perpetrator is responsible for the CSA), and Trust (i.e., the mother should be able to trust her partner). Two themes were associated with increased blame: Covert Knowledge (i.e., the mother was expected to have covert, intuitive knowledge of the CSA) and Mistrust (i.e., the mother should have known better than to trust her partner). Faulting mothers for the CSA of their child may reduce reporting of, and help seeking for, CSA, due to fear of being blamed.

Keywords

child sexual abuse mother blame attributions thematic analysis child trauma

Society has many beliefs related to maternal figures, including a socially constructed and narrow ideal of what a “good” mother is (Davies & Krane, 1996). For example, mothers are expected to always put their children’s needs above their own (Carvalho, Galvão, & Cardoso, 2009) and to be selfless, giving, and nurturing (Davies & Krane, 1996). Mothers are expected to have the perfect mixture of traditional and feminine qualities, as it is believed that this kind of mother is the best, if not the only, person able to take care of children (Carvalho et al., 2009).

When these standards of motherhood are not met, and such expectations are violated, mother blaming results (i.e., assigning fault to mothers; Davies & Krane, 1996). That is, when mothers are held to a higher level of responsibility, or held solely responsible, for the health, well-being, and behavior of their children, mothers are then responsible for their child’s negative outcomes, behaviors, and experiences. When it is believed that a “good” mother alone produces “good children” (e.g., with high grades, well-behaved) and these standards are not met, fault instead of praise is placed, often on the mother alone (Carvalho et al., 2009). Jackson and Mannix (2004) argued that the mother is held responsible for her child’s well-being beginning with her child’s conception and this responsibility endures through the child’s entire life into adulthood.

Research demonstrated that mothers are blamed or held at fault for a wide variety of problems. Caplan and Hall-McCorquodale (1985) found consistent evidence of blame toward mothers for an extremely wide variety of their child’s problems such as anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, phobias, suicidal behavior, delusions, and schizophrenia. When looking at more recent research about mother fault in general, this trend did not dissipate. For example, mothers have been blamed for children’s assaultive behavior (Herrenkohl, Egolf, & Herrenkohl, 1997), disabilities and struggles in school (Colker, 2015), their child’s obesity and health-related trouble due to weight gain, as well as general lifestyle choices the mother makes while pregnant that could inadvertently create weight problems, through a biological link, for their children and even grandchildren (Warin, Zivkovic, Moore, & Davies, 2012).

Fault is also assigned in child sexual abuse (CSA) cases, even when mothers are not perpetrators of that sexual abuse (i.e., nonoffending mothers; for the remainder of this article, the use of “mothers” refers to nonperpetrating mothers). After their child had been sexually abused, mothers were shown to experience a lack of community support, blame attributions from the abused child and family members, and blame from social agencies and courts (Fong & Walsh-Bowers, 1998). Caplan (2002) argued that no matter what a mother does, the mother is always responsible for the problem. For example, if the mother sits too close to her child, she is hovering. If she is not sitting close, she is cold and rejecting (Caplan, 2002).

Mothers themselves possess this view of the ideal mother. When their children have negative experiences, including traumatic events, mothers often place fault on themselves. Once a child has been hurt, mothers begin to participate in self-blame and guilt (Carvalho et al., 2009). Mothers report feeling as if they are solely responsible for taking care of and protecting their children at all times, and that they should be completely devoted and attentive to all their child’s needs (Carvalho et al., 2009). Mothers frequently referred to their own guilt stemming from their inability to be consistently physically present with their children, stating that the abuse would not have happened if they had been with their child because they “would have known” (Carvalho et al., 2009).

Mother fault is also evident in mass media portrayals of CSA. In a study looking at Malaysian newspapers, blame toward mothers was significantly highlighted, obscuring the responsibility of male perpetrators (Niner, Ahmad, & Cuthbert, 2013). Such images and discourse about mothers include mothers as “bad” and “unable to protect their children” and emphasized how “good” mothers are overly feminine, maternal, and nurturing. These findings are similar to that of media analysis on mother blame in CSA internationally (Niner et al., 2013).

Mothers experience negative consequences as a result of their child being sexually abused as well as a result of being blamed for this abuse. When mothers are held at fault for the abuse, they can experience secondary traumatization. Specifically, mothers report experiencing clinically significant distress in the form of intrusive and avoidant symptoms, immediately following the abuse of their child and at 1 year after the incident (Manion et al., 1998). In addition, Plummer and Eastin (2007) reported that mothers of sexually abused children often feel powerless in relation to the systems they need to report the abuse to. Levels of perceived support and intrusive and avoidant symptoms are both predictors of mothers’ emotional functioning, both immediately following child trauma and long term (Manion et al., 1998).

Current Study

Although research has established that nonoffending mothers are frequently held at fault for CSA and that such fault leads to negative outcomes for mothers, few researchers have examined the reason that nonoffending mothers may be held at fault for CSA. Identifying the contextual factors behind this can open up new avenues of research, help reduce mother fault, shed light on the stigma surrounding mothers whose children have been abused, and provide targeted support for the negative effects assigning fault has on mothers. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine contextual factors that either increase or decrease fault that the general population holds toward a nonoffending mother in a CSA scenario.

Method

Participants

Participants were recruited from an online participant database, which targeted both Canadian and American participants. Participants completed a demographic information form and evaluated vignettes about CSA. An initial sample of 111 participants began the study. Three of these participants failed to complete the study and their data were excluded, leaving 108 participants. This sample was 51.9% female, 47.2% male, and 1% gender unspecified. On average, participants were 30.35 years old (SD = 12.12) and self-reported as European American/Canadian (67.6%), African American/Canadian (7.4%), Native American/Canadian (5.6%), East Asian (4.6%), South Asian (3.7%), Hispanic/Latino (3.7%), and Other (7.4%).

Measures and Materials

Demographic form

Participants completed a demographic information form on which they were asked to report their gender, age, and ethnicity for the purposes of describing the overall sample.

CSA vignette

Participants read an adaptation of the CSA vignette used by Waterman and Foss-Goodman (1984). Each vignette depicted a situation where a female child was sexually abused by a 35-year-old male perpetrator. In cases of CSA, female children are more commonly the victims of sexual assault as compared with male children (Back & Lips, 1998); therefore, a female victim was used in our vignette. A male offender of 35 years of age was depicted in this scenario, as this was the age in the original vignette used by Waterman and Foss-Goodman. The perpetrator was listed as either the child’s father or the mother’s boyfriend, chosen to extend our findings beyond previous research in this area, which has primarily focused on biological father perpetrators, despite the fact that a nonfather adult male inside the home is the most common perpetrator of CSA (Back & Lips, 1998). During our analyses, as discussed further below, responses to these two versions of the vignette were combined. In research examining attributions of blame toward nonoffending parents, Back and Lips (1998) reported that greater responsibility is assigned to nonoffending parents when the victim of the abuse is a younger age (i.e., 6 years old as compared with 13 years old). Thus, in an attempt to reduce as many potential confounds as possible, other variables that have been shown to influence attributions (e.g., child age) were purposefully left out of the vignette.

Participants were asked to provide open-ended responses indicating whether they blamed the mother for the abuse of her child, held her responsible for the abuse of her child, believed she caused the abuse, or thought the she could have prevented the abuse. Participants were asked to explain why they would or would not find the mother at fault for each construct. Participants were asked about these four constructs, rather than one overall attribution of blame, as previous research has indicated that blame, responsibility, cause, and prevention are separate attributions in CSA cases and should be measured as such (Back & Lips, 1998; Maynard & Wiederman, 1997; Shaver & Drown, 1986).

Procedure

Potential participants viewed an invitation to the study online through the participant recruitment website. This invitation outlined the purpose and procedures of the study. If information regarding the sexual abuse of a child caused undue distress, recruits were discouraged from participation. Those who were interested clicked on the study link provided and reviewed the informed consent form. Implied informed consent was given when the participant continued on through the survey.

Once participants accessed the survey, they completed the demographic questionnaire form and then presented the CSA vignette. Participants were asked to provide open-ended responses regarding blame, responsibility, cause, and prevention, in relation to the mother in the vignette. Participants were asked to answer all questions to the best of their ability and were informed that there would be no penalty for leaving questions blank or quitting the study altogether. After all questions were answered, participants were debriefed via an online debriefing form.

Data Analytic Plan

Very little is known about the contextual factors associated with an increase or decrease in blame toward mothers when their child is sexually abused. This may be due to the limited amount of qualitative research in this area. Qualitative methods enable researchers to generate rich data to explain the perspectives of the participants (Steckler, McLeroy, Goodman, Bird, & McCormick, 1992). A thematic analysis was employed to examine participants’ self-reported explanations of the blame, responsibility, cause, and prevention responses they chose (Braun & Clarke, 2006). This allowed compilation of overarching themes about how participants make, or do not make, attributions and what contributes to their explanations.

Lack of previous research in this area called for an inductive approach that was started without preexisting theory, hypotheses, or ideas about attributions of mother blame, responsibility, cause, or prevention. A semantic approach was used (e.g., Braun & Clarke, 2006) that did not attempt to extrapolate or infer what an individual meant by his or her response. All responses were taken at face value, no assumptions were made, and data where the researchers could not agree upon meaning of participant response, or meaning was unclear, were left out of the overall analysis. Examples of unclear responses include the following: “It’s their personal affair,” “she did not,” and “no mention of mother.” Our analysis was approached from a social constructionist view with the understanding that although this sample is from a culturally diverse community population, responses may have been influenced by participants’ subjective thoughts on the topic of mother blaming in CSA cases.

Participants provided 312 responses to the four open-ended questions. We first thoroughly read participant responses to obtain a general understanding of the data (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). Relevant text was highlighted and notes were taken based on responses in an attempt to describe mother blame, responsibility, cause, and prevention. Codes were derived for each response to capture the overall themes depicted within the data set. We found identical themes ran throughout the responses to all four dependent constructs (i.e., blame, responsibility, cause, and prevention), similar to our quantitative findings in Zagrodney and Cummings (2016). Thus, all four variables were combined into a term that was labeled mother fault and as a result all responses were combined into one response for each participant (i.e., 108). Individual codes were then sorted into themes. During analysis, the researchers decided that responses by each participant were allowed to be indicators of multiple themes (n = 41). That is, if a participant’s response seemed to best fit in two different themes, it was put in both.

Some data points were eliminated due to the inability to decipher meaning without extrapolation or because they did not fit into a preexisting theme (n = 44) or because the content was not understood (n = 10). Any discrepancies in the data were discussed until a consensus was reached. As a final step, each researcher independently went back through the data to check for any additional codes we might have missed the first time and those codes were then added in and included in the main themes. Five themes emerged from the data: Lack of Overt Knowledge, Physical Act, Trust, Mistrust, and Covert Knowledge. These themes fell into two categorical contingencies of increasing blame attributions toward the mother or decreasing blame attributions toward the mother.

Results

Contingencies That Decreased Mother Fault

Lack of Overt Knowledge

Respondents indicated that these mothers had no direct information the CSA had occurred; therefore, they were not at fault. This included responses that indicated that the mother could not have known of the abuse because she was not home at the time of the CSA. Example responses of overt knowledge include the following: “her mother did not suspect that anything like this would happen, so she is not responsible”; “the mother did not know what was happening”; “. . . she [the mother] did not know that her partner was capable of abuse of her child”; and “the mother was not at home.” Overall, participant responses that discussed Lack of Overt Knowledge indicate participants’ belief that being unaware of the CSA, because of a lack of direct information, precluded the mother from being at fault for that CSA. That is, participants believed that without knowledge that CSA happened to her child, a mother cannot be held responsible for it.

Physical Act

Respondents indicated that the only person to be held responsible was the perpetrator who physically committed the act of CSA. Examples are as follows: “. . . she [the mother] did not do it or cause it. The [father] is responsible for his own actions” or comparably that the mother could not be held responsible or at fault because she did not physically commit the act of CSA (e.g., “the mother left her child alone with the man willingly, but did not have anything to do with the abuse”; “she [the mother] has no way to be responsible for behavior like that”; and “because she’s [the mother is] not the one that molested the girl”). Participants whose responses corresponded with this theme highlight the importance of considering who is the direct perpetrator of CSA when determining who is “at fault” for such an event.

Trust

Participants indicated the mother should have been able to trust her partner; therefore, no fault for the CSA could be found to lie with the mother. Example responses include the following: “I place no blame on the mother. A wife should be able to put her faith in her husband that he will protect her child when she is away . . .” and “Trusting her partner is normal.” That is, because participants felt that it is understandable for women to trust their partners, they did not find fault with the mother for doing so.

Contingencies That Increased Mother Fault

Mistrust

Respondents indicated the mother was at least partially at fault for the CSA because of her “mistaken” trust placed in the perpetrator. Examples were as follows: “[the mother’s] trust was misplaced,” “she [the mother] could have not left her child,” and “she [the mother] could have prevented it [the abuse] if she was home . . .” Some participants’ responses more broadly indicated that mothers should never trust any other caretakers to protect their child. In contrast to the previous theme of Trust, participants whose responses fell in this theme believed that mothers should not necessarily trust their partners and if they do, and something bad happens, the mother should be held at fault.

Covert Knowledge

Respondents indicated that despite not having concrete, overt knowledge of the CSA, the mother was expected to have covert, intuitive knowledge of it. That is, participant responses for covert knowledge were categorized by any response that indicated that the mother “should have” known about the abuse, that the mother was expected to be able to “see” or “sense” the character of the perpetrator, or that she should have been able to see warning signs of the CSA. Unlike Lack of Overt Knowledge, participants whose responses indicated expectations of Covert Knowledge seemed to believe that the mother should have had indirect knowledge of the sexual abuse. Furthermore, participants reported that the mother was thus “at fault,” at least in part, for the CSA because she was expected to have such covert knowledge. Example responses were as follows: “I think there had to have been some warning signs she missed,” “[the mother] should’ve known,” “. . . one would hope she know the character of the man she married and would have caught warning signs,” “. . . [the mother] should be responsible/have enough insight to take her child with her when they go out,” and “. . . [responsibility toward the mother] because she should have some situational awareness.”

Discussion

This study examined contextual factors that either increase or decrease fault assigned toward nonoffending mothers whose children have been sexually abused.

Themes fell into two categories: contingencies that increased mother fault attributions and contingencies that decreased mother fault attributions. The themes that were linked to a decrease in mother fault attributions included the first theme, Lack of Overt Knowledge, which emphasized fault toward the mother as being contingent upon concrete knowledge of the CSA. That is, without knowledge that the CSA has occurred, mothers cannot be held culpable for that CSA. Similarly, the theme of Physical Act emphasized that fault for CSA lies with the perpetrator of that act. As such, the mother is not held responsible for the CSA given that she did not, herself, commit the physical act and was instead a nonperpetrator. The theme of Trust indicated that mothers should be able to trust their partner and thus should not be faulted for the CSA because of that expectation of trust. In contrast, the themes of Mistrust and Covert Knowledge indicated that a portion of participants would consider assigning some level of fault to the nonoffending mother. Participants highlighted issues of mistrust that appeared to hold the mother at least somewhat at fault for the CSA, given her “incorrect” placement of trust in her partner, the perpetrator. Moreover, participant responses within the Covert Knowledge theme indicated that mothers are expected to know CSA is occurring even without direct knowledge of the event and/or sense the negative character of the perpetrator, and are thus at least partially at fault for the sexual abuse of their child.

The underlying context to our qualitative results is that mothers, even when not the perpetrators of CSA, are held to high, potentially unrealistic, standard of motherhood. That is, similar to previous research findings (Davies & Krane, 1996), mothers are held to the standard of the “ideal mother.” For example, our results indicated expectations that the mother “provided an opportunity” for abuse by leaving the child at home with her father, the assumption that the mother “left her child with a total stranger” (i.e., her boyfriend), and because the mother had her partner in the home and providing care for her child, it was “. . . kind of an even match in terms of cause” between the nonoffending mother and the perpetrator of the CSA.

The theme of Covert Knowledge is the idea that mothers are supposed to be able to “sense” or “see” what is going on or what has happened even when they have no tangible knowledge of the CSA taking place. The idea that women should “. . . see the character of [her partner],” “be aware of his proclivities,” or be “present enough in the situation to see the possible dangers” does hold the mother to an unrealistically high level of expectation. That is, women seem expected to be able to infer the entire character of the men in their lives or demonstrate a highly tuned sense of a man’s potential good or bad character. However, as one participant pointed out under the theme of Lack of Overt Knowledge, “[mothers] are not fortune tellers.”

Results support previous findings that mothers are held to a high level of responsibility, well-being, and care of their children to an unrealistic degree (Davies & Krane, 1996). Results supported the idea that nonoffending mothers are at fault, at least in part, for their child’s CSA because of the trust they place in partners to provide care for that child or because of their inability to intuitively know CSA has occurred. As has been demonstrated both in the broader literature and in the current results, when these standards of care are not met, fault, blame, and responsibility are placed on these mothers (Davies & Krane, 1996). Previous studies have demonstrated that when a child is sexually abused, participants believe it is the mother who should have stayed home with the kids instead of working (McGuffey, 2005), that mothers are then “unfit” to take care of their child after a trauma (Ford, Schindler, & Medway, 2001), and that these stereotypes occur to the point of charges being brought against the mother (Leonard, 2013), a mother losing custody of her child (Plummer & Eastin, 2007), or being labeled as a co-offender (Finkelhor & Hotaling, 1984) when they are not perpetrators of the CSA. Moreover, the expectation that mothers should be able to “sense” or “see” covertly what it happening to their child without being explicitly told, does fit with mother’s beliefs about themselves. Elliott, Powell, and Brenton (2015) found that mothers frequently blame themselves for the abuse of their child and that this blame stems from a feeling of lack of self-sacrifice and protection of their children. These women believed that a “good mother” sacrifices for their child as a way to protect them.

Complexities Within Participant Responses

Interesting and notable complexities within participants’ responses occurred. Several participants tended to provide somewhat contradictory qualitative responses that simultaneously captured both fault and innocence on the part of the mother. For example, one mother said, “She could not know for sure that he had that inclination, but one would hope she’d know the character of the man she married and would have caught warning signs”; “. . . because it’s not her fault that the guy did it, but she should be responsible/have enough insight to take her child with her when they go out”; and “she may have seen it happening and could prevent it, or not have seen it.” These responses indicated potential complexities associated with fault attributions toward nonoffending mothers. Although there is a consensus in previous research that mothers are held to unrealistic standards of child care, there is a lack of recent research in the area of mother fault and CSA. It is possible that contradictions within participant’s responses are a result of changing gender attitudes, such as acceptance of fathers as primary caregiver, and the changing roles held by mothers, such as working outside the home.

Social desirability or participant comfort might also affect participant responses—Participants may feel more comfortable providing a “true” response with numbers instead of words or vice versa. For example, as previously mentioned, our quantitative, experimental examination of attributions of mother fault (Zagrodney & Cummings, 2016) indicated that different attributions were assigned depending on CSA perpetrator (i.e., mother’s boyfriend vs. child’s father), whereas this qualitative examination of open-ended responses showed no differences in reasons for attributions of mother fault by perpetrator. This provides evidence that method can affect results, and future research should continue to utilize and compare quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Complexities found in participant responses may be explained by the topic sensitivity that may be difficult to discuss. Future research in this area may elucidate the considerations participants have when assigning blame, as well as the consequences of such blame.

Implications of Results

Assigning fault to nonoffending mothers for CSA has a number of negative consequences. First, such blame might reduce reporting of CSA. Lovett (2004) argued that a child’s willingness to disclose CSA is potentially countered by the fear that telling someone will result in further harm to the family (e.g., blaming the mother). Moreover, if a mother worries about being faulted for the abuse of her child, especially if she has a fear of losing custody because of the CSA, she might also feel too afraid to report it. Second, both mothers and children experience negative effects of CSA. Child victims of CSA experienced adjustment problems in both emotional and behavioral domains (Manion et al., 1998). Prior childhood CSA has also been associated with poorer psychological well-being, teenage pregnancy, parenting behaviors, and adjustment problems in the victim’s later offspring (Roberts, O’Connor, Dunn, Golding, & The ALSPAC Study Team, 2004) If mothers worry about being blamed for CSA, they might avoid pursuing potentially helpful services for themselves or their children, such as psychotherapy (Jackson & Mannix, 2004).

Understanding contextual factors that increase and decrease fault toward nonoffending has implications for child victims and mothers. Results of the present study indicate that beliefs that mothers should mistrust caregivers and that mothers should have intuitive abilities to discern that the intentions of men in their lives are malicious, are likely to increase attributions of mother fault in CSA cases. In contrast, emphasizing the lack of overt knowledge of CSA and focusing on perpetration as being a requirement for blame seem to decrease these attributions. Expectations of having to be constantly present with children with a mistrust of all other potential caregivers can encourage mothers to limit their own pursuits such as full-time work or education in an effort to maximize the well-being of their children or to focus on being present (Stone, 2007). However, Elliott et al. (2015) argued that these sacrifices might reduce the mother’s ability to support themselves and their children long term, particularly for single mothers. Such conversations (i.e., that mothers should be the only caregiver for their children) can cloud conversations that might be more appropriate, such as how to provide access to affordable child care or educational opportunities for mothers to pursue such endeavors.

Taken together, our results also indicate how mother fault might potentially be decreased following CSA. First, it should be emphasized that mothers lacked overt knowledge of the CSA, did not perpetrate a physical act, and should be able to trust chosen partners not to commit CSA. Second, contingencies that increase assigned fault should be questioned and directly challenged. While it might be assumed that mothers should never trust their partners or that mothers should possess covert knowledge about the character of others, these are unrealistic expectations (as previously discussed). Such unhelpful assumptions can directly be challenged by the contingencies found to decrease mother fault.

Such emphasis should be undertaken by service providers who work directly with families affected by CSA, for example, to reassure mothers, who do often blame themselves for CSA (Carvalho et al., 2009), that they are not at fault for actions they did not commit or were unaware off. This reassurance might assist mothers with this self-assigned fault, allow them to heal, and allow them to more easily assist their child with recovery after CSA. In addition, service providers themselves, who might also hold biases against mothers in CSA cases (Fong & Walsh-Bowers, 1998), should be educated about the potential contingencies increasing fault that they themselves might unconsciously subscribe to and perpetuate, to question and eliminate such biases in their work. Last, advocacy by service providers and researchers is needed to more broadly educate the general public about such biases against mothers, challenge these biases, and as a result decrease the stigma mothers often experience after CSA.

Study Strengths and Limitations

This study adds several strengths to the literature in this area. Our use of a community sample provides a unique and more in-depth understanding of mother fault attitudes, as compared with undergraduate participants who have been most commonly used in previous studies of mother blame (Back & Lips, 1998; Harding, Zinzow, Burns, & Jackson, 2010; Waterman & Foss-Goodman, 1984). Although previous studies reported that different variables of the abuse scenario, such as a child’s gender and age, affect how much blame and responsibility is placed on the mother, the present study expanded on these ratings by providing information on contextual factors that both increase and decrease fault attributions. It is only by understanding these contextual factors that impact attributions of mother fault for the sexual abuse of their children that we can begin to understand how to change these biased attitudes that can result in significant negative ramifications for the mother, the child, the family, and the community at large.

Limitations should also be noted. Although anonymous, all measures used were self-report, which can promote bias as participants might try to represent themselves in a positive way. In addition, the present study used a vignette with a female child victim and an adult male perpetrator. Manipulations of other variables (e.g., gender of the perpetrator, child age, child response, gender of victim) may result in different patterns of blame. Although extraneous variables were purposefully excluded in these CSA vignettes, these variables might be considered or imagined by the participants and thereby influence their attribution ratings, even when not explicitly described. Future research may control for these variables in a way that does not just eliminate them from the abuse scenario. As previous research has demonstrated, changes in attributions of blame are dependent on which variables are used in the abuse scenario (Back & Lips, 1998; Graham, Rogers, & Davies, 2007; Harding et al., 2010; Waterman & Foss-Goodman, 1984).

Future Directions

Our results open several exciting avenues of additional research. First, it is imperative that additional research examine health care professionals as well as professionals involved in cases of CSA to determine the influence of possible bias associated with attributions of fault based on perpetrator. Blame and responsibility attributed by professional groups may influence the provision of appropriate care and decisions about the abuse situation. Research examining professional groups found that they blame nonoffending mothers (Ford et al., 2001; Reidy & Hochstadt, 1993). However, no research has identified differences in professional fault attributions dependent on perpetrator type or asked professionals why they are assigning fault to mothers or what contextual factors affect faulting attitudes for professionals.

Second, a review by Bolen (2002) found an exclusive focus on mothers in previous studies on nonoffending parents in CSA cases and found no prior research independently examining the role of nonoffending fathers. With the exceptions of articles by Back and Lips (1998) and Waterman and Foss-Goodman (1984) who examined father blame alongside mother blame, most research talks solely about mothers or ambiguously mentions the role of parents (Hestick & Perrino, 2009) in CSA cases. Jackson and Mannix (2004) claimed that society scrutinizes the actions of women as mothers and relates these actions to their child’s well-being in a way that it does not with fathers. This salience of mothers’ actions has enabled society to hold mothers to a higher standard of expectations than fathers (Davies, Collings, & Krane, 2003). However, to our knowledge, no research to date has tackled the role of nonoffending fathers independently from mothers or potential blame associated with nonoffending fathers in CSA cases. This oversight needs to be remedied.

Third, it is imperative for future research to examine the influence of diversity on mother expectations and mother fault. In general, people of certain groups, such as ethnic minorities, those with specific religious beliefs, and single mothers, might be at increased risk for mother faulting. Walls and Wong-Wylie (2007) argued that the idea of a “good” mother has been historically transmitted through a patriarchal society, and those following traditionally patriarchal norms are at higher risk of mother blaming attitudes. For example, mothers from non-Western cultures, or from strict patriarchal cultures, have tended to maintain attitudes surrounding the maintenance of the family unit even after discovery of partner perpetration (Allagia, 2002). In a group therapy setting, Allagia (2002) found that these mothers expressed the desire to balance the needs of their sexually abused child with that of rehabilitation of their partner perpetrators. Because of these beliefs, both group members and service providers perceived these mothers as less supportive, leaving the mothers to report feeling attacked, judged, isolated, and misunderstood. Moreover, mothers are subject to increased societal disapproval when they have not represented what society views as the ideal mother, such as when they are single mothers (Jackson & Mannix, 2004). This might increase the risk of mother fault for mothers of ethnic minorities given that children of some minority groups, specifically Black children (55%) and Hispanic children (31%), have been more likely to live with mothers only, compared with non-Hispanic White children or Asian children (21% and 13%, respectively; Vespa, Lewis, & Kreider, 2013). This potential increase for mother fault attributions is especially concerning given higher rates of reported CSA among ethnic minorities in previous years (Pereda, Guilera, Forns, & Gómez-Benito, 2009; Ullman & Filipas, 2005).

Fourth, it is important for researchers to further examine situations where mothers are not assigned fault, both for CSA and for other conditions and experiences of their children. Our results indicate that there are contingencies where participants do not fault mothers (e.g., themes of Lack of Overt Knowledge, Physical Act, and Trust). This is consistent with research by Back and Lips (1998), who found that even though mothers were blamed for the sexual abuse of their child, only 13% of participants assigned such blame. However, very little research has examined lack of fault for CSA.

Last, given the complexities within some of our participants’ responses (e.g., statements that simultaneously capture fault and lack of fault for the mother), additional qualitative work that more explicitly captures these complexities (such as discourse analysis) is warranted. Understanding how people speak and discuss mother fault is also a rich source of potential information regarding contingencies that increase and decrease fault.

Summary

In conclusion, our thematic analysis indicates that common themes underlie participants’ considerations and attributions of fault. Our results have important implications for reporting of CSA and treatment for nonoffending mothers, children, and the perpetrator in CSA cases. Moreover, our results indicate ways to advocate to decrease inappropriately assigned mother fault by advocating for broader acceptance of the contingencies that decrease fault and challenging those that increase it. Such advocacy needs to be conducted by both service providers and researchers and should be aimed at assisting mothers of CSA victims, leading service providers to challenge their own potential biases, and educating the general public. Future research is needed to better understand the complexities of why mothers are held at fault for CSA, as participants indicated a sometimes contradictory set of views. By gaining a better understanding of how and why these attributions are occurring, an approach to improving attitudes toward nonoffending mothers of children who have been sexually abused can be examined.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Caitlin Faas for her assistance with this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by a Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation Establishment Grant and a Social Science and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant, both awarded to Jorden A. Cummings.

Author Biographies

Jessica L. Zagrodney is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Saskatchewan. She also completed her bachelor of arts in psychology at the University of Saskatchewan.

Jorden A. Cummings is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research is currently supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

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