Embodying Feminist Mothering: Narratives of Resistance through Patriarchal Terrorism from both Mother and Child’s Perspectives

Abstract

This chapter is a collaborative co-scripting of narratives of resistance from a parent and child’s perspectives as survivors of domestic violence and patriarchal terrorism. This chapter will weave the autoethnographical narratives of resistance from contemporary feminist perspectives to unpack the systematic male control and violence characteristic of patriarchal terrorism. This chapter is written as a direct response to the gaps in existing literature and scholarship on domestic violence that address these three themes: firstly, the voices of children and young people who have experienced patriarchal terrorism speaking in their own terms; secondly, the complex and crucial role of mothers and mother-figures in the survival as well as recovery process of children and young people; and thirdly, the nature of the more invisible and insidious forms of abuse and control through the eyes of survivors of patriarchal terrorism.