Parenting by Men Who Batter

Jeffrey L. Edleson is a Professor in the University of Minnesota School of Social Work and Director of the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse. Over the past two decades Dr. Edleson has conducted intervention research at the Domestic Abuse Project in Minneapolis and served as a consultant to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and to the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. An Associate Editor of the journal Violence Against Women, Dr. Edleson has published widely on domestic violence, groupwork, and program evaluation.Oliver J. Williams, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community and Professor in the University of Minnesota School of Social Work. He has worked in the field of domestic violence for over twenty-five years as a battered women's advocate, batterer intervention counselor, trainer, and researcher. He has also been involved in several national advisory committees and collaborated with the Family Violence Prevention Fund, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and other domestic violence and social service organizations.

As a senior policy analyst in the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, working on issues of domestic violence and child maltreatment for many years, I have come to believe that we must pay a lot more attention than we have to fathers who batter and the various ways their behavior affects their children. Given my experience, this book by Edleson and Williams is most timely and welcome. They have assembled a group of important chapters that provide very useful policy and practice perspectives that can advance our ability to keep children safe in families without violence and destructive control. Parenting by Men Who Batter tackles critical and cutting edge issues.

• 1. Introduction: Involving Men Who Batter in Their Children's Lives ; 2. Shared Parenting After Abuse: Battered Mothers' Perspectives on Parenting After Dissolution of a Relationship ; 3. Assessing the Best Interests of the Child: Visitation and Custody in Cases of Domestic Violence ; 4. Deciding on Fathers' Involvement in Their Children's Treatment After Domestic Violence ; 5. A Conceptual Framework for Intervening in the Parenting of Men Who Batter ; 6. Guidelines for Intervention With Abusive Fathers ; 7. Working With Fathers in Batterer Intervention Programs: Lessons From the Fathering After Violence Project ; 8. Latino Fathers in Recovery ; 9. Evaluating Parenting Programs for Men Who Batter: Current Considerations and Controversies