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Abstract: 

In a paradigm changing book, “Coercive Control in Children and Mothers’ Lives” (Oxford, 2022), sociologist Emma Katz, Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth at Liverpool Hope University, describes how the use of coercive control in abusive relationships affects children and their mothers. The children in her study suffered from a range of coercive controlling behaviors by perpetrators/fathers, extending far beyond exposure to physical violence. Fathers/father-figures controlled mothers’ time and movements, isolated mothers (and consequently isolated children) from sources of support, entrapped children and their mothers in constrained situations where their access to resilience building and developmentally-helpful persons and activities was limited, and produced family environments that narrowed mothers’ and children’s space for action. Katz concludes that perpetrators/fathers isolation/control tactics with children may contribute as significantly as physical violence to emotional and behavioral problems in children. In this article, the noted authority Evan Stark, who has lectured and conducted trainings related to coercive control throughout the world, offers an authoritative commentary on and summary of Professor Katz’s important new book.

Keywords: Coercive Control and Family Life

Affiliations:  1: Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University.