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Mothering Under Difficult Circumstances

Challenges to Working With Battered Women

McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Linda Davies

McGill University, Montreal, Canada

This article explores challenges to understanding mothering under difficult and unusual circumstances—that is, in the context of a shelter for battered women and their children. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with staff at a local battered woman’s shelter, the authors suggest that mothering is largely invisible and subject to idealized constructions. When mothers are rendered visible in the shelter, they are observed through a lens of heightened sensitivity to abusive relations that are marked by unacceptable use of power and control. This lens is distorted in relation to mothering, and an understanding of the emotional complexities and challenges of everyday mothering is a prerequisite for practice with women with children. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for theory and practice that center on the concepts of power and maternal subjectivity in relation to battered women as mothers in shelters.

Key Words: domestic violence • feminism • mothering • shelters

Affilia, Vol. 22, No. 1, 23-38 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0886109906295758


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