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A new report reveals millions of mums and children face quietly pervasive economic coercion – with family budgets being used as tools for domestic abuse.
Abuse isn’t always obvious – least not when it takes place in the domestic sphere. But new figures from the charity Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) show that financial coercion is quietly affecting a staggering number of women and children. It’s a form of violence that remains underreported and misunderstood.
According to the latest research, 27% of mothers and children under 18 experienced economic abuse in the past year, meaning around 3.9 million UK children are living their daily lives under the shadow of financial control.
The SEA also reports that 4.2 million UK women (roughly one in 15) faced economic abuse from a current or former partner in the past 12 months.
So what exactly is ‘economic abuse’? Well, it’s coercive control in one of its most insidious forms – and, as shown by the statistics, is incredibly commonplace.
Examples of financial abuse are preventing access to bank accounts or benefits, concealing information around spending or bills, withholding child maintenance or even stealing from shared accounts.
SEA’s CEO Sam Smethers describes specific examples of perpetrators ‘stealing children’s pocket money,’ with economic abuse meaning women and children go without at Christmas and throughout the year. In many cases they are pushed into poverty, and extreme cases homelessness.
‘The Prime Minister has described economic abuse as a national emergency,’ says Smethers, ‘and it’s a scandal that so many are living with its devastating consequences. But we urgently need the government to publish it’s long awaited VAWG strategy and prioritise tackling economic abuse. It must close the loopholes that allow abusers to manipulate systems, like child maintenance, to destroy lives.’
A third of the women included in the SEA report said that a current or ex partner had refused to provide financial support for childcare despite being able to afford it.
One woman described her ex partner’s tactical approach to withholding funds, often stopping maintenance payments right before Christmas.
Economic abuse has often remained the unspoken half of domestic violence, given how easy it can be to ignore and how difficult it is to define. And while women face the brunt of the financial consequences, children aren’t simply collateral damage – in many instances they’re targeted directly, with parents stealing directly from their child’s savings accounts.
One in six women with children under 18 say their partner has stolen money directly from their child or blocked access to benefits the child is entitled to. What could easily be written off as complacency or absence by the father is more often than not a strategy of domination.
As the report shows, many perpetrators are capable of providing financial support to the mother of their children. They refuse to because it presents a means to control the situation, leaving women vulnerable and easy to manipulate.
