Contesting family-based violence: sole parenting possibilities and alternatives

Abstract

This paper considers problematic recognisability and deficit constructions of sole parent families which I suggest contribute to conditions that can perpetuate family-based violence. Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s safety (ANROWS) state that one in four women in Australia have experienced at least one incident of violence by an intimate partner, equating to 2.2 million women who, since the age of 15, have experienced male intimate partner violence. A proliferation of discourses constructing the deficit ‘single mother’ tends to reinscribe the centrality and normative power of the hetero-nuclear family. When we obscure and restrict choice and alternatives to familial forms we restrict the possibilities of these alternatives becoming liveable lives. When deficit constructions of sole parenting are reinforced, people in dangerous and untenable violent family circumstances are less likely to view sole parenting as a possibility for constituting an alternative and happy family life.