A ground-breaking report, authored by leading feminist researcher Anne Summers, has revealed 60 per cent of single mothers have experienced domestic violence at the hands of a previous partner, compared to 17 per cent of women more broadly.
The report also sets out the immense financial challenges women face when leaving abusive relationships — and the lack of adequate government support for single mothers when they do escape, whether temporarily or permanently.
“When a woman leaves a violent relationship, we applaud that, but we never think of what happens next,” Summers says, “and that, in some ways, her life might be worse.”
While the number of single mothers who have experienced violence is shocking, it’s eclipsed by the number of women who remained in violent relationships at the time of the survey.
In 2016, 275,000 women reported suffering physical or sexual violence from a current partner. Of these respondents, 193,400 lived with their abusive partners at the time of the survey and almost 90,000 said they wanted to separate but were unable to.
A quarter of these women attributed being unable to leave to having no money or financial support. Other considerations included having nowhere else to go, fear of their partner, concerns for the safety of children or pets, and cultural and religious reasons.
“Women who experienced violence had to make a terrible choice: they either stay with the violence possibly continuing, or possibly getting worse, or they leave,” Summers says. “And if they leave, they have a 50 per cent chance of living in poverty.”
Terese Edwards, the chief executive of the National Council of Single Mothers and their Children, has spent years supporting single-parent families, many of who are dealing with poverty, violence and financial hardship.
“My heart has been broken numerous times when I have worked with families only to discover that they’ve decided to go back to the hands of their abuser because they thought it was a better outcome for their children than living rough or not being able to give them the necessary clothing or food,” Edwards says.
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