“Gimme shelter”? A call for creating non-violent communities

Abstract

Responses to domestic violence, such as those codified in state and voluntary sector service provision, have historically provided both ‘common ground’ and ‘contested’ territory for thinking about the intersections between feminism and the politics of childhood. Drawing on the evaluation of a voluntary sector programme, the Community Group Programme for children and their mothers in London, England, the chapter explores‘ the (im)possibilities of dialogue’ across feminism and childhood for those children and women/mothers who have experienced family violence. We argue that drawing children, as active meaning makers, into the analysis of and responses to domestic violence offers a way of extending the possibilities of social support systems in ways that can further strengthen women’s recovery experiences, as well as benefitting children and young people themselves. At the same time, we argue that the focus on the mother–child couple does not take us far enough in complicating responses to domestic violence. Our intention in the analysis presented here is to imagine more complex and contextualised responses to domestic violence. An analysis that focuses on the messy actualities of practice responses has the potential to recruit further interlocutors into the fold and move the practice conversation beyond its currently exclusive focus on women as heterosexual mother-victims and children as genderless witnesses (and sometimes victims) to predominantly male-perpetrated violence. Troubling these categories can help to complicate responses to family violence that are sensitive toa diversity of genders, ages, sexualities and cultures, extending service provision to young men and to heterosexual and homosexual fathers who may have experienced violence (from female or male partners, respectively), as 226 Feminism and the Politics of Childhoodwell as lesbian mothers and parents of both or either gender who experience violence from their children and mothers/fathers.

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ORCID for Lucy Neville: orcid.org/0000-0002-5074-5241

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