“She’s just a bad mother”: Perceptions of failure to protect children in relationships with intimate partner violence

Abstract

Failure to Protect (FTP) is a legal statute that connotes permitting or enabling child abuse by a parent or guardian. Women are more likely than men to be charged for ‘failing to protect’ children from exposure to intimate partner violence or physical abuse. Factors hypothesized to be associated with disparities in charges of FTP were examined. Participants (N = 375) recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) were randomized to read one of two vignettes of an FTP case, with the gender of the non-offending parent manipulated. Study participants rated the non-offending parent in terms of guilt (yes/no) for FTP. Women were more likely to be found guilty of FTP than men, and victim-blaming attitudes and gendered parenting expectations influenced verdicts.

Keywords:

• Failure to protect
• intimate partner violence
• child abuse

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge all the participants in this study for sharing valuable information.

The authors also acknowledge those who work to change policies to include the consideration of domestic violence as a relevant factor in the adjudication and sentencing of women.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.

Notes

1 According to the Ortiz (2019), Tondalao Hall was released on November 8, 2019 after serving 15 years of her 30-year sentence.