Motherhood on Trial: Women, Psychology, and the Family Courts

Psychology is frequently enlisted to aid judges in making decisions about the care of children in family court proceedings. This is particularly apparent with the use of psychological assessments of parents. There are also appeals to psychology from non-psychology professionals such as the use of attachment theory by social workers (Forslund et al., 2022). Whilst this might represent a desire to make evidence-based decisions, there is the potential for psychology to reinforce and reproduce inequalities, particularly regarding mothers who are more likely to be the subject of these assessments.

In this thesis I examined the role of psychology in the assessment of mothers in public law family court care proceedings from a feminist perspective. I did this by analysing anonymised published judgments from the family courts of England and Wales using discourse analysis (DA) largely drawing on Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA). After a process of exclusion, I looked at five judgments in depth, all of which related to babies or very young children where the Local Authority was arguing for the child to be removed.

In line with a mainstream psychology worldview, mothers’ personalities and mental health were referred to as a cause for concern, but often with little reference to the actual real-world implications of this on their child. The function of assigning mothers’ unstable personality traits, lack of insight, or mental health problems, appeared to be to cement their positions as irrational and unfit parents as opposed to the rational professionals, and rational (if risky) fathers. The use of psychologists as expert witnesses came in the judgments, where it was clear that their statements were regarded with high importance, despite the use of questionable practice such as blaming a mother’s victimhood of domestic abuse on her so called ‘compulsive personality traits’.

This raises important questions about the role of psychology in causing and furthering harm and injustice. It also raises the question of whether and how psychology could and should contribute to family court proceedings.