Season 3 Episode 9: Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives: An Interview with Author and Academic Dr. Emma Katz
About This Episode
In this episode, David and Ruth chat with author and academic Dr. Emma Katz about her new book Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives. Dr. Katz shares the story behind the development of this groundbreaking book, where she shares her learnings from interviews with 15 groups of mothers and their children.
During this far-ranging conversation, David, Ruth and Dr. Katz discuss:
How she was inspired to write the book by identifying how the literature was ignoring the experience of children in homes impacted by coercive control
The “magic” question that unlocked the stories of adult and child survivors
How children and their mothers are impacted by perpetrators’ coercive control
How an emphasis on physical violence can blind professionals to key aspects of the experience of children
The similarities between the experiences of adult and child survivors
How children’s agency is minimized and adult survivors are blamed through the use of the term “parentification”
How mental health approaches are deficient in their identification of protective efforts
How the use of the term “historic abuse” rarely useful
How adult and child survivors heal from coercive control
Additional Resources
Safe & Together Institute’s domestic abuse–informed trainings
Safe & Together Institute’s upcoming events
David Mandel’s book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence