Political relational ethics: examining women’s positionality in the UK family court through an autoethnographic case study

Scant academic attention has been paid to damaging contradictions in the responsibilisation of mothers regarding the quality of fathers’ relationships with their children in Private Law Proceedings (PLP), otherwise known as the family court. Recent research has highlighted both the poor physical and mental health experiences of women going through family court proceedings and how parental alienation allegations are weaponised to trap, silence, and pathologise mothers. This paper utilises an autoethnographic case study to explore the positioning of mothers by professionals within complex discourses of motherhood in PLP. The regulation, surveillance and possible sanctions of the PLP left limited options for resistance, as resisting the position of the ‘good’ mother could result in detrimental sanctions against the mother and children. This paper evidences how patriarchal institutional processes are complicit in enabling fathers to maintain coercive control over mothers and their children.