Caught in the crossfire abused mothers’ struggles to navigate the Swedish domestic violence shelter system

In this article, I apply institutional ethnography and the ‘generous’ concept of work to explore the strategies that abused mothers use to navigate the Swedish domestic violence shelter system. The article is based on qualitative interviews with eight women who have stayed in domestic violence shelters with their children. The analysis shows that the mothers enter a contradictory and gendered system in which their parenting skills are scrutinized and questioned, and demands for father-child contact coexist with demands to protect the children from their violent father. To navigate these institutional practices, mothers maintained a facade in front of the social services and shelter staff, sought allies within the system and tried to facilitate father-child contact without compromising the safety of their children. Mothers also spent a considerable amount of time trying to mobilize the system to help their children.