Children removed from home by court order: Fathers' disenfranchised grief and reclamation of paternal functions

Nehami Baum and Irit Negbi

Children and Youth Services Review, 2013, vol. 35, issue 10, 1679-1686

Abstract: The study, based on in-depth interviews with 15 fathers in Israel, reports on fathers' emotional reactions to the court-ordered removal of their children from home. The findings show that all the fathers experienced the removal as a traumatic event, which utterly devalued them and annihilated their paternal identity. Although they suffered intense pain and loss well after their children were removed, their grief was disenfranchised as friends and family accused them of allowing the removal to happen. With this, most of the fathers acclimated to the removal and even reported an expansion of their parental identity. The discussion suggests some theoretical conceptualizations of their intense feelings of pain and loss.

Keywords: Court-ordered removal; Fathers; Child's removal; Paternal identity; Loss (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740913002375
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:35:y:2013:i:10:p:1679-1686

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2013.07.003

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().