Despite the feminist rhetoric about male domestic violence, mothers are actually more likely than fathers to neglect and emotionally and physically abuse their children. For instance, figures from the West Australian Department for Child Protection show that of the 582 substantiated cases of child abuse by their own biological parents in 2007-08, mothers were responsible for 73 per cent, while fathers committed only 27 per cent. In Western Australia, mothers are 17 times more likely than fathers to neglect their children. Also, mothers carried out almost 68 per cent of all cases of emotional and psychological abuse committed by parents against their children. Moreover, about 53 per cent of all physical abuse of children, and more than 93 per cent of all neglect cases, were committed by mothers. University of Western Sydney academic Michael Woods informs that the statistics ‘debunk the myth that fathers posed the greatest risk to their children’. Dr Woods also reminds that ‘if similar data was available in other [Australian] states it would show similar trends’.
Between 1989 and 2012 women accounted for more than half (52 per cent) of all child homicides. Not only are mothers more likely to kill their biological children than fathers, but they also make up for more than half of the substantial maltreatment perpetrators, a fact confirmed by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC). In May 2015, AIC released Domestic/Family Homicide in Australia, a research paper which states: ‘Where females were involved in a homicide, they were more likely to be the offender in a domestic/family homicide’. Although the majority of Australian victims of domestic homicides overall are female (60 to 40 per cent), women are the sole offenders in more than half (52 to 48 per cent) of all the killings of children by their biological parents, and offenders in 23 per cent of intimate partner homicides. In addition, Australian men are far more likely than their female counterparts to become the victims of filicide (murder of a child) (56 to 44 per cent), parricide (murder of a parent) (54 to 46 per cent), and homicides involving other domestic relationships (70 to 30 per cent).
The figures in other Western countries are remarkably similar. In the US, statistics reveal that mothers are almost twice as likely as fathers to abuse their biological children. As stated by the Department of Justice, mothers account for no less than 55 per cent of all child murders in that country. In a well-known empirical research using a significant sample of 718,948 reported cases of child abuse, the US Administration for Children and Families discovered that mothers are 1.3 times more likely to abuse their children than biological fathers. They comprise 58 per cent of the child abuse perpetrators. When acting alone, mothers in that country were twice as likely to abuse their children, with mothers also being the major perpetrators of infanticide, or child homicide.