'Keeping Mum': Breaking the silence on parenting stress in the context of IPV

Intimate partner violence (IPV) remains a serious social and economic problem in Australia. Consistently the results of more than 50 years of empirical study find that IPV is associated with a range of detrimental effects on women’s physical and mental health. Similarly, it is well established that exposure to IPV has a significant adverse impact on children who are at risk for a range of psychosocial difficulties. The growing recognition of the impact of IPV on child functioning has highlighted the importance of the non-offending caregiver to the recovery of children who have been exposed to IPV. One of the most consistent predictors of child functioning is parenting stress, however, to date, the extant literature has predominately been focused upon maternal parenting stress as a contributor to child outcomes, rather than as an outcome of IPV. This dissertation begins with a scoping literature review examining the extant literature on maternal parenting stress in the context of IPV. Utilising a mixed methods approach this dissertation then explores maternal parenting stress from three distinct but interrelated areas. A systematic literature review examined the utility of current parenting interventions to mitigate maternal parenting stress in the context of IPV. The results of the efficacy studies of interventions for children and their mothers which included measures of maternal parenting stress suggest that current interventions are not always performing as expected with regards to maternal parenting stress. Concerningly, the results of the reviewed interventions suggest that maternal parenting stress in many instances remained not only high but clinically significant despite improvements in crucial domains such as child behaviour and maternal mental health. Notably, it would appear from the results of this examination of the literature that maternal parenting stress has yet to be identified as a valuable target of intervention. Given the unexpected findings with regards to the utility of the reviewed parenting interventions to mitigate maternal parenting stress in the context of IPV, the next area drew on the expertise of specialist domestic service providers to better understand the underlying factors that contribute to maternal parenting stress in the context of IPV. Consistent with a trauma informed ecological model of the impact of IPV on maternal functioning, the service providers in this study identified a range of mechanisms by which IPV contributed to maternal parenting stress. The service providers identified key factors such as a lack of perpetrator accountability, unsupportive institutional responses, particularly those of family courts, a lack of access to essential services and resources, maternal mental health and a specific form of abuse involving children and the maternal role as contributors to maternal parenting stress in the context of IPV. The third area of enquiry examined in this dissertation related to maternal parenting stress and problematic child behaviours in the context of IPV. To date a nuanced analysis of existing parenting stress and problematic child behaviours measures has yet to be conducted. The findings of this third area of enquiry suggest that there are considerable variations in maternal parenting stress which corresponded with variations in the problematic behaviours of the children they were caring for. Taken together the results of the current dissertation suggest that the extant understanding of maternal parenting stress in the context of IPV is of limited utility. The final chapter proposes a broader framework in which maternal parenting stress is considered in the context of the abusive and violent environment in which it occurs. The proposed framework enables not only an understanding of the complexity of mothering in the context of abusive and violent intimate relationships but also the opportunity to consider her strengths, resilience, and nurturance of her children.