Call me naive but I had never really considered before how a common reason for removing children from their homes & separating them from their mothers is that the mother "refuses to leave" their violent partner and the children are considered to be in danger from the man. I saw a documentary about this recently and then looked into it more and I am absolutely shocked that men who are considered a danger to children are so often allowed to remain in normal society while the child and the mother are forcibly separated, causing immense trauma to both, and the child is put into care with all the known disadvantages that brings.
I don't know why everyone is not shouting from the rooftops about the absolute inhumanity and insanity of this. If a man is a danger to children why is he not locked up? People who are a danger to themselves and others are supposed to be sectioned under the mental health act, I thought. If they are a man and the "others" to whom they are a danger are their partner's children then what, that's ok because boys will be boys, and we should remove the child from the danger instead because the danger itself is just how the world is and can't be helped, we can only try to get out of its way?
It seems to me that the assumptions behind this practise and behind the acceptance of it are:
- Male violence is a fact of life, like the weather. It's a mother's job to protect her child from these things, and if she does not manage it she does not deserve to keep the child.
- Men are entitled to abuse their partner and their partner's children. A man who goes next door and assaults his neighbours will be in prison or sectioned but in His Own House Under His Roof the rules are different.
- Women "choose" to remain with violent men for the sheer fun of it and those who do so are selfish women who are choosing for themselves at the expense of their children. (All this choosing going on, huh, it's not as if violent men ever target vulnerable, previously abused women and mess with their heads until they lose sight of their free will or anything.)
I just don't get how social services can have enough evidence of a child being in danger to actually remove them, but somehow that evidence is not enough to remove the man who is actually doing the bad things???