How Do Men in Treatment for Intimate Partner Violence Experience Parenting their Young Child? A Descriptive Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

Men who use intimate partner violence (IPV) often have challenges as caregivers such as poor understanding of children’s needs and emotions. There is little knowledge regarding their everyday-life experiences of being a parent. We interviewed 14 men in therapy for intimate partner violence on how they experienced their relationship to one of their children (mean age 4,5 years). We performed a descriptive phenomenological analysis. Informants seldom explored their children’s experience. They found that their fathering was influenced by past relationships and negative expectations for the future. The informants’ bodily experience of emotional arousal was described as difficult to control and understand and was a limited source for meaning making in the father-child relationship. The experience of being a good father was connected to presence and control of the child’s behavior. Informants felt that what they experienced as good parenting lacked others’ recognition. Interventions for partner-abusive men should address their fathering and focus on fathers’ life-experience and context as influencing their fathering. Therapeutic interventions should strengthen partner-abusive fathers’ awareness of and meaning making from their emotional arousal. Where safety permits, dyadic interventions aiming at re-establishing the child’s experience of safety in the father-child relationship should be considered by therapy providers as a complement to established interventions with partner-abusive men.