What Do We Know After Decades of Research About Parenting and IPV? A Systematic Scoping Review Integrating Findings

Attachment, warmth, nurturance, and communication

Given the developmental importance of parents accurately reading and responding to children’s emotional cues (Bowlby, 1969; Bradley, 2007), it is not surprising that multiple studies focused on how IPV influenced this process. Multiple studies (n = 64) demonstrated that IPV was related to a decline in nurturance and communication and often led to an increase in abuse of or aggression toward children. In some cases, studies showed that mothers may engage in harsher parenting out of their own emotional exhaustion pursuant to the abuse or in attempts to create order and avoid more severe actions from the abusive partner (Greeson et al., 2014; Levendosky & Graham-Bermann, 2000). For example, one qualitative study of women experiencing IPV found that women described that their abuse of their children was often due to the fear and exhaustion caused by their own abuse or represented attempts to manage children’s behavior so as to not “set off” the abuser (Damant et al., 2010).

On the other hand, many of the studies we located challenged the conclusion that experiencing IPV absolutely curtails attachment, warmth, and nurturing (n = 41). For example, findings from one national study from a sample of almost 2,000 women indicated that while current IPV victims had significantly lower scores on measures of parenting responsiveness and learning stimulation than past victims of IPV, there were no significant differences on this measure between current IPV victims and those who were never exposed to IPV; furthermore, neither past nor current IPV significantly increased the risks for mothers’ use of spanking (Casanueva et al., 2008). Other work indicated that IPV was positively associated with mother–child attachment and parenting effectiveness, and even that women may positively compensate in order to overcome the effects of IPV on their children (Anderson & Danis, 2006; Buchbinder, 2004). In a quantitative study of women exposed to IPV in the prior year (N = 350), 94% reported their top protective parenting strategies were affection and paying attention to raising children’s self-esteem (Nixon, Tutty, et al., 2017).

Discipline, control, and monitoring

Another aspect of parenting influenced by living within IPV is effective and appropriate supervision and monitoring, with nine studies indicating that parents responded with either a hyperincrease in supervision or a deterioration of supervision. Cataloging these findings helped to draw out important points such as those from a qualitative study that demonstrated that, within violent contexts, mothers were preoccupied with monitoring not only children but also circumstances that may precipitate violence, particularly the moods of an abusive partner (Lapierre, 2010a). Other studies found that mothers were increasingly disempowered by the IPV they experienced, which led them to become overly permissive rather than harsher.

Parental vigilance may represent both a maladaptive outcome of violence, one that significantly interferes with the well-being of parents and families (as discussed above) and a deliberate, thoughtful, and/or highly protective response to violence, as 15 studies found. One qualitative study discovered that mothers increased their monitoring of their children to try to avoid violent episodes from the abusive man (Wendt et al., 2015). Increased monitoring may be important not just for the situation of violence but to help nurture resilience within children; a quantitative study of mothers (N = 219) found that effective discipline and limits protected children from the mental health effects of living with IPV (Graham-Bermann et al., 2009).

While the body of findings related to parenting practices was consistent and came together well into a heuristic understanding of the relationships between IPV and parenting, it was also important for us to clarify the mechanisms within women’s lives that might be responsible for how IPV impacts their parenting. Through our analysis of the literature and concomitant creation of our conceptual model (Figure 2), we developed a deeper understanding of how parenting practices are directly influenced by maternal well-being and by maternal coping (and the relationships between these two dynamics). Specifically, maternal well-being and coping help children directly but also, as many studies indicated, undergirded parenting practices such that mothers experiencing IPV with substantial mental health consequences would, for example, have poorer attachment. The inverse was true as well—for instance, mothers experiencing IPV who were able to cope with the situation through various strategies had better mental health, which supported their abilities to provide their children with stronger parenting practices like increased warmth and better discipline.

Mental health effects related to parenting

Many studies (n = 22) had findings indicating that mothers’ proclivity toward insensitivity and even violence against their children might be the result of poorer mental health resulting from the violence mothers endure in their homes. For example, one longitudinal study of 705 participants revealed that the effects of IPV on harsh parenting are mediated through maternal depression (Cox & Gustafsson, 2012). Similarly, in a qualitative study, Lapierre (2010a) reported that mothers felt the violence constrained their mothering, leading them to experience depression, which in turn made it difficult to perform the hard work involved in caring for their children. Maternal mental health suffers not only because of IPV itself but also by the crisis of parenting within violence, which incites constant worry and anxiety, distress, guilt (Kelly, 2009; Wendt et al., 2015); exhaustion and somatic responses to the strain (DeVoe & Smith, 2002); and increased stress and worry about caretaking (Buchanan et al., 2013; Kelly, 2009). On the other hand, not all studies that tested it supported the notion that poor mental health resulting from parents’ exposure to IPV results in impairments in parenting; one longitudinal study using path models found no indirect effects of maternal mental health within the relationship of IPV to parenting behavior (Yoo & Huang, 2013)

Maternal efficacy and identity

Our analysis also demonstrated that IPV undermines the abilities of parents to provide for children’s material or emotional well-being and, in so doing, destabilizes the confidence related to one’s role as a mother.

Several (N = 13) studies concluded that IPV creates challenges with mothers meeting basic needs for their children like food, water, safety, and health care. A quantitative study of mothers (N = 111) found that 90% reported they were unable to care for children as they would have wanted to due to abuser’s behavior (Mbilinyi et al., 2007). Multiple studies showed how IPV creates a particular crisis around finances, resulting in implications for the health of children, and also mothers, as they sacrifice their own food security and access to medications for their children (Brodsky, 1999; Ford-Gilboe et al., 2005). One large quantitative study found that the odds of mothers receiving inadequate prenatal care were two times higher for women exposed to IPV than for women not exposed to IPV (Cha & Masho, 2014). McInnes (2004) showed that mothers experienced difficulties providing for their children because they needed to abandon basic living necessities when fleeing the violence.

Difficulties providing for children due to IPV lead to profound crises about women’s confidence in their identity as a mother as multiple studies (N = 29) demonstrated. Some of these studies illustrated how woman’s sense of maternal competence is being targeted by aggressors who preyed on women’s parental role as part of the violence they enact. For instance, two studies found being pregnant, or parenting increased the duration or severity of IPV (Lapierre, 2010a; Vatnar & Bjørkly, 2010). In qualitative studies about IPV, women reported that abusers particularly preyed on mother–child bonds and caretaking as well as their sense of authority and increased vulnerability as a mother (Goldblatt et al., 2014; Jones & Vetere, 2017; Moulding et al., 2015).

Relationships between maternal mental health and sense of maternal efficacy

As our conceptual model illustrates (Figure 2), our findings pointed to the extent to which threats to maternal confidence and self-efficacy influence maternal mental health for women facing IPV. Multiple studies (N = 21) demonstrated that failure to meet the tasks of parenting can undermine mothers’ confidence in their parenting skills, producing intense feelings of guilt and maternal inadequacy. Some studies (particularly qualitative ones) linked parents’ psychological responses (including their feelings of inadequacy, guilt, anxiety, and depression) to their challenges in safeguarding children or providing for their children. For example, in one qualitative study of 16 women who had left violent relationships, mothers facing IPV reported sleeplessness, constant anxiety, and despair, disrupting the mother–child relationship as women prioritize achieving physical safety for children over emotional needs—although these mothers remained resolute in their aim of protecting and nurturing their children (Buchanan et al., 2013).

As described above, IPV tends to create deep-seated crises for women around their parenting, with profound effects for their mental health. Yet at the same time, results of some studies (N = 10) also pointed to how motherhood constitutes a particular identity that lends meaning, a sense of agency, purpose, and pride to the responsibilities of parenting within IPV. Findings from one study of mothering within IPV highlighted how, against a backdrop of demoralizing violence and the suffering it causes, mothering might represent one of the few areas in which women gain confidence and a certain degree of power, circumscribed as it may be by the women’s everyday realities of abuse and control (Semaan et al., 2013). Studies indicated that seeing the effects of IPV on their children was one of the most important motivators for mothers to seek help or flee (Randell et al., 2012; Rhodes et al., 2010) and that women found internal strength from the role of parent (Wendt et al., 2015). Regaining a sense of power from the role of oneself as a parent is only one way that mothers cope with parenting within IPV as we describe below.

Action-/Problem-focused coping

When faced with violent circumstances, some studies showed how mothers directly took actions against the aggressor and the violence itself as well as its consequences. Studies showed how mothers faced with violence might direct actions toward the oppressor, strategizing to overtly or covertly undermine the perpetrator’s authority. For instance, studies pointed to how mothers would sometimes directly confront their aggressor, including telling them to leave children alone, calling in law enforcement on the perpetrator, or fighting back (n = 10). Nixon, Bonnycastle, and Ens’s (2017) survey study of 350 mothers facing IPV found that 61% of respondents reported ending the relationship in order to protect children and parent effectively. Some studies also pointed to how mothers might use negotiation and strategic compliance to try to ameliorate the violence and its effects (n = 7). For example, one qualitative study of 18 women found that mothers tried to avoid abuse through appearing to comply with the abuser (Nixon, Bonnycastle, & Ens, 2017). Women might also be able to flee, leaving the circumstances either permanently or temporarily, as over 10 studies showed (n = 12). These studies showed that leaving the situation of violence with one’s children may become a central task of parenting (Kelly, 2009; McInnes, 2004). Even when parents cannot escape the violence, they may physically or emotionally isolate themselves and their children, mandating the children go to their rooms, for example (Haight et al., 2007; Pels et al., 2015).

Multiple studies also showed that even if they do not directly attack the violence, mothers reconfigure material and psychological circumstances (n = 14). Examples of these strategies included attempts by parents to normalize daily living for and with children and to promote children’s well-being through maintaining children’s schooling and other routines. For instance, one study found that mothers ignored their own needs and utilized their scarce resources to protect and care for their children, ensuring tasks like getting children to school were accomplished despite maternal physical injuries (Lapierre, 2010b). While all of the studies in this section demonstrated a variety of action-based coping methods, some studies uncovered how women used multiple strategies based on complex and ongoing decision-making processes. Kelly (2009), for instance, who interviewed 17 women exposed to IPV, found that mothers oscillated among their use of all of the strategies mentioned in this Action Coping section, including staying, fleeing, confronting the abuser, and parenting, as they sought to protect themselves and their children.

Emotion-/internally based coping

When dealing with the considerable trauma and stress of IPV, women might also turn inward as a way to mitigate the effects of violence on themselves and their children. One such strategy is modifying their own emotional reactions to the circumstances - as 15 studies concluded. In this case, mothers attempt to nurture their own feelings of hope and deny their pain in order to adopt a positive outlook (Buchbinder, 2004). A few studies drew out how women focus on internal, emotionally based coping explicitly so that their children will not suffer additional stress (Buchanan et al., 2013; Busch & Lieberman, 2010). As one might imagine-but the rare study captures- these efforts require mothers to deny their own pain and suffering while they try to maintain hope and agency to literally and figuratively move forward (Haight et al., 2007; Kennedy, 2005). Relatedly, though these findings were limited, one study pointed to how religion and faith helped with maternal endurance within violence (Pels et al., 2015).

Social coping

Another set of findings pointed to how mothers facing IPV tend to seek resources and support networks to promote well-being among their children both psychologically and logistically (N = 22). For instance, a quantitative study of women exposed to IPV found that three of four mothers reached out to informal support networks and half to formal support from professionals in the community (Nixon, Tutty, et al., 2017). It is not always the case that the support networks are positive—this same study also had the women rank the three most and least helpful strategies they used, of 20 strategies—alongside physically fighting back against the partner and staying with him, mothers identified contacting the police as among the least helpful strategies (Nixon, Tutty, et al., 2017). These findings are echoed by Jones and Vetere (2017), who found that women recalled unhelpful responses from police. Another qualitative study found that mothers were reluctant to reach out for fear of triggering a CPS report (Rhodes et al., 2010). One study also illustrated how mothers living with IPV might experience their social networks as further burdens and responsibilities rather than a source of help (Bohrman et al., 2017).

While social support is clearly important, multiple studies demonstrated how IPV can isolate a mother from her social support networks, closing her off to the tangible and emotional benefits external support can potentially provide her and her children. Many of the studies we examined (N = 12) found that mothers experiencing IPV were considerably isolated from family, friends, and community. Some studies showed how this was a tactic of abusers to further their control over women, and the loss signified diminished practical and emotional help with children (McCarthy, 2019).

As our analysis of various coping strategies (action/problem focused, emotion/internally based, and social) illustrate, the effects of IPV on family and child well-being are not simple but, indeed, operate through multiple points. Uncovering these points helps us to better understand both the ways that mothers suffer and the ways they adjust their actions to help support their own resilience and that of their children. Our analysis of the literature suggests that IPV profoundly influences parenting practices, often through its effects on maternal well-being (both mothers’ mental health and their sense of efficacy and identity). Maternal well-being, in turn, is profoundly influenced by mothers’ coping. Through bringing together a wide range of literature, our analysis helped us build a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics surrounding motherhood within IPV (see our conceptual model, Figure 2). Our integrative work consisted of not only documenting, but also analyzing, the ways that more comprehensive considerations of the realities of mothering within IPV would benefit from conceptual and methodological shifts.