Rethinking Children’s Best Interests: Moving Beyond Trauma and Tackling Gender Double Standards
By David Mandel, CEO and Founder, Safe & Together Institute
Let's face it: Our current approaches to domestic violence cases involving children are falling short. Yes, recent changes to Australia’s Family Law Act make significant strides to be more domestic abuse–informed, but the legal changes alone won’t get us where we need to be to correctly serve children’s best interests. To realize the legal changes’ full potential, we need to challenge some deeply held myths and practices.
We should start with the issue of cultural expectations around parenting and gender. The development of evidence in family law cases often reflects the wildly different expectations we have for mothers and fathers. We demand superhuman protection from moms while expecting next to nothing from dads. This isn’t just unfair—it’s also dangerous. It leads to mother-blaming and father-ignoring, obscuring who’s really causing harm to these kids. Unchecked, this bias can impact how and what evidence is presented to the court.
Next, let’s talk about the myth of trauma-informed practice. It’s important to recognize that trauma-informed practice has been revolutionary. But on its own, it misses a big piece of the puzzle. Coercive control doesn’t always look like a “traumatic event,” but it’s shaping these children’s lives every single day. When dad’s financial abuse means no money for school supplies or his manipulation of the courts keeps the family in constant turmoil, that impacts a child’s development, even if it doesn’t fit neatly into our trauma checklists. When we don’t include these forms of harm to children in our analysis, it’s harder to hold perpetrators accountable as parents and to fully understand the family dynamics. Also, when we fail to see the full picture of coercive control and cling to these gendered parenting expectations, we risk labeling a protective mom’s actions as “alienation.” Next thing you know, kids are placed with an abusive parent.
On the flip side, high expectations for mothers as parents means we don’t fully credit them for all they do to keep themselves and their children safe. We have to start seeing the Herculean efforts of protective parents, usually moms. Maintaining bedtime routines when you’re walking on eggshells, keeping kids connected to their culture when your abuser is isolating you—that’s protective parenting in action. It matters for kids’ development, and we need to recognize it.
But here’s the kicker: We need to raise the bar for perpetrators dramatically. Stopping the violence is the bare minimum. What about actively repairing the harm they’ve caused? Taking responsibility for how their choices have impacted their kids’ emotional and psychological well-being? That'‘ what real accountability as a parent looks like.
So, what do we do? We need an approach that:
Calls out gendered parenting double standards
Sees both trauma and ongoing coercive control
Challenges the relevance of parental alienation allegations made by domestic abuse perpetrators against survivors
Maps how abuse impacts every aspect of kids' development
Celebrates the everyday protective efforts of survivors
Demands real accountability and change from perpetrators
Aligns with protective parents to keep kids safe and thriving
It’s time to create a genuinely child-centered response to domestic violence. One that tackles trauma AND ensures kids’ ongoing safety, stability, and right to healthy relationships.
Are you ready to put children’s best interests first, for real this time? It means challenging our biases, ditching harmful myths, and holding perpetrators to actual parenting standards. Let’s transform these systems together. Our kids deserve nothing less.
To read more about these ideas, check out David's book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.