Episode 25: Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers—A Conversation with David Mandel

David Mandel Podcast

Ali Kessler: [: 00:00:00

I love to get a male perspective of everything. So if you wanna just start off by just introducing yourself, a little bit about your background.

David Mandel: Sure, Ali, and thanks for having me on your show. I really appreciate the work you're doing as well. It's great to be joining you and your audience. I can tell you I got started this years ago.

For me, I became very [: 00:01:00

This was out in St. Louis back in the day and something clicked in place for me and I can't even, to this day, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. I can't tell you what that was or exactly what happened, but something was in locked in me. Literally a passion, a commitment that has carried me through almost 40 years.

al moment in some ways where [: 00:02:00

Was in Connecticut where I've been based for years, there was a murder of a toddler by this woman's boyfriend and the mother of the child. And unfortunately these stories are very common as and it forced that child protection agency to look at their practice and domestic violence. And so I got pulled into doing work around perpetrators and training social workers.

And that's the beginning of everything that I've done since then, which is really looking to transform systems, first child protection, but then across. All systems that touch families to hold perpetrators accountable as parents to get those systems to partner better with protective parents and ultimately to keep those kids safer.

Ali Kessler: And what kind of like background in school do you have? What did you major in to do this type of work? I'm just curious.

David Mandel: It's really interesting. My undergraduate was in government political science.

Ali Kessler: That does go hand in hand.

h about understanding social [: 00:03:00

Coercive control and domestic violence at the family level, not only the social level. So I did that and then I started doing work with perpetrators. Then I went back to school for my master's in counseling and psychology. There you go. And did, a study around for my master's thesis study around perpetrators in programs across the US and Canada, a thousand, looking at their attitudes and beliefs around their behavior towards their kids and their partner as a parent.

And so again, that, that came later in my career. I was already established, I was already working, I was already speaking publicly. But it really added something nice for me to really understand certain things and since then, it's really about doing the work.

Ali Kessler: So how did the Safe and Together Institute come about?

Aside from that, how. Did it develop and form into what it is today?

y listening deeply to women, [: 00:04:00

And so I. I really developed the model out of deep listening to the voices of women in general and survivors. And then really had these set of experiences working with perpetrators, looking at systems, and then getting involved with child protection. And what I'll tell you there is that what I learned very quickly is that child protection systems and then these other systems really didn't work with men.

Didn't really, engagement didn't really, and so a case could come in because of a dad's violence to his partner in front of his kids, let's say. And the case would get opened by child protection from a referral from the police, and then all the casework would be done with the mother. Even though, so even though somebody was legally a parent had parental responsibility and their behavior was the reason why the case got opened, all the social work would be done with the mother.

And so that began my [: 00:05:00

And then the institute became a vehicle for really delivering it globally. Now,

Ali Kessler: how does the model work? How is it used? Who uses.

David Mandel: Those are all great questions. The model one is just to say it's being used all over the world. It's being trained actually everywhere in the world. People

Ali Kessler: get trained in it and then have it for patients or,

David Mandel: yeah, it, they get trained in it and they become certified to train in it.

be going to the Netherlands [: 00:06:00

The book's being translated should come out in Dutch soon. So if you have any listeners who speak Japanese or Dutch, they can, they could read the books in that language. But the model is a way of approaching and thinking and analyzing cases, but it's also a way about, it gives you guidance to how to.

Talk to survivors, how to literally partner with them. So it's a whole of family. What's different is it's just not from the point of view of a survivor or a perpetrator, but it's a point of view. Incorporating those perspectives, listening to survivors particularly, but teaching professionals how they should do their job better in a domestic violence informed way.

And so it's different than a service delivery model. This is what I think is often challenging for people. They think, is it a domestic violence service? We don't work directly with families. We teach social workers. And it's not just child protection, social workers anymore. It's addiction workers, mental health workers.

you an example in Australia. [: 00:07:00

Addiction services work with aboriginal organizations. We work with domestic violence services. We work with all these different things, and we work with the federal family court that does divorce custody, parenting time. And so there, for instance, we've been training for four years. Judges the judicial officer, have delegated authority to do interim orders without findings.

But the social scientists, as they refer to the court report writers who have so much influence and most recently we developed training for what they call their independent children's lawyers, which are attorneys for children or like in the us like guardians, ad litem or children's attorneys and other places.

gender expectations, of low [: 00:08:00

And so we train all of that and the model is designed to help them do their job better, more efficiently and ultimately more safely, more equitably, with better attention to good outcomes for adult and child survivors.

Ali Kessler: Now, I'm curious, have you gotten any pushback from like father's rights movements or.

Men in general,

David Mandel: I, to be honest, we get a little bit here and there, but not a lot. And what I'll say is one of the reasons, and maybe other ones too, one of the reasons is we are and this is what's embedded in the title of the book, right? The book is Stop Blaming Mothers, ignoring Fathers, how to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

oing and we know better. You [: 00:09:00

But the other thing is that a lot of survivors would tell you I want my kids to have safe contact with their father, safe contact with their father. I don't want to be with them, but I understand, like I would say the majority of survivors I've spoken to will say. I don't want to be with 'em anymore, but I understand my kids that this person's their father and they just want support for navigating that safely.

And what I found is people had a really black and white said, kick the guy out. He's a bad guy. And that's not aligned with either what the survivor wants in most cases, or the children want in many cases. And so I wanted to give systems a language to focus on safety and this reality of what survivors wanted.

matter. And what that means [: 00:10:00

We're just gonna promote fathers matter. And that's a lot of what fa what sort of is. Father's rights groups, as you call them have taken a position on,

Ali Kessler: Even

David Mandel: if they've done harm, let's just, but let's strengthen that relationship. Let's make sure that's, and what I also,

Ali Kessler: it's been such a stigma on fathers not wanting to be involved in their children's lives, that they had to make this, to say, we're here.

But Right. They're, that doesn't mean they're

David Mandel: And what I'll say on the other side is in the US particularly, this is less true or less different in other countries, we had because of. Going back to slavery, going back to Jim Crow, going back to even the modern welfare state. There was a lot of social forces pushing poor men of Colorado families.

and that often forced men to [: 00:11:00

So you'd have child protection agencies saying where's the dead? Where's the dead? Where's the dead? Without regard to whether he'd been violent and they were separated because he was violent and he wasn't in the picture. There were other reasons, so what I found is you had those folks saying, dads are great, let's get them involved.

The father's right to the other side saying, I have a right to my kid. Doesn't matter what I did. And what I said is there's something else we can say. And so this is why I don't think we get pushback as much. Because we say father's choices. And behaviors matter to children and the, their partner and their functioning of the family.

So it's not, fathers are great or let's get rid of dads. It's let's just talk about dads as parents who can be good parents, their actions and that's right. Could be good parents or bad parents, right? But let's have a standard of looking at their. Their behaviors and saying how are they strengthening or awakening the function of the family?

It's really not [: 00:12:00

Ali Kessler: It's just hard to get that, especially when the father is saying, no, I, you're, this is parental alienation. You're keeping me outta my child's life. 'cause that's what happened in, in my case.

David Mandel: This is and so there's a chapter in the book on, as on the myth of parental alienation, which says.

So I tackle that directly on, and it's very tied to the gender expectation. So one of my things that I feel like I learned on the ground, so this wasn't coming in this way, this was really watching that the systems and the professionals, so this is, I'm not gonna say that every mom's a better mom than a dad.

Sure, they're great moms that are poor moms, they're great dads, they're poor dads. That's the world. But what I found is the professionals. The systems had a built-in bias that needs to be called out, which is if I walk into, if historically I walked into a house as a social worker, and this is goes through a lot of systems, I'm gonna ask the mother if the kids are medically up to date, and if the kids are not medically up date, I'm gonna expect you to fix it.

ou accountable for that. I'm [: 00:13:00

Even in those cases, the dad's behaviors were often invisible or they were held up on this amazing pedestal of isn't he a great dad? No, he's just doing what a parent's supposed to do. I don't wanna minimize it, but

Ali Kessler: I actually, my judge, in my case, when we first went to our first hearing for paternity, the judge, a lawyer told the judge my client moved down here to rescue his son.

Like he's the hero in all of this. He also murdered his son.

ental alienation, it's not a [: 00:14:00

It's, estrangement. It gets used in these different ways. But if you look, if you lean into and say, okay, is there a dynamic that could exist in some situations? One parent actively turns a kid against the other parent. You just accept that for the moment and you look at the definitions anybody's using around that thing.

What they're gonna tell you is there has to have been a good prior relationship between that alleged alienated parent and the kid. So you have to be able to look at the quality after. Yeah, the quality of the relationship. That's what I'm saying. You have to also, excuse me, say is this child's.

Desire not to have contact. Unreasonable or unjustified. This is built into the definition that most people use,

Ali Kessler: right?

t and you followed what most [: 00:15:00

Child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and even in some literature, the standard for justified or reasonable not wanting to see resistance to contact with the kids is a parent who has a history of just not being engaged. If this like this, the bar is really low in the literature to say. Of course this kid doesn't wanna spend time with this person because this person hasn't paid attention to, not that they've been abusive even, right?

But what I find is that, that in most of these systems that attention to that, the alleged alienated parent's parenting, usually a dad almost always, but not exclusively isn't looked at in the same scrutiny. And so the issue becomes the mother's gatekeeping, the mother's controlling, the mother's, giving her unjustified fear, all those things,

Ali Kessler: right?

David Mandel: So the book really directly addresses that head on.

er topics, will readers find [: 00:16:00

David Mandel: One is, again it's all against this backdrop of how do we tackle and think about equalizing expectations of mothers and fathers. That's all. It's just what you said about the men's rights stuff.

All I'm saying is fathers. Just treat fathers like you treat mothers. Just look at their parenting behavior through the same lens. And don't expect women to be these super moms. I had somebody say to me, a social worker once, two years ago if that was my kid talking about a mother, I would jump out of a second story building to save them.

Now maybe you would, and I'm not, I'm like, I'm not justifying, I'm not saying I wouldn't do that either. Maybe I would but to talk to somebody about somebody like. Unless they're doing, willing to put their life in jeopardy, that they're not being protective, is this incredibly unrealistic standard that's there.

So the book is premised on we have to look at it. So for instance there's the myth of child witness, which basically says we lose holding perpetrators accountable as parents because we just think the intersection between domestic violence is, did the kids see and hear?

And [: 00:17:00

Four, because dad's violence caused eviction, lost a job, the mother fled with the kids to shelter and then moved someplace else. The dad found them, and then dragged them back to where they used to live. And so the kid's been disrupted six different ways to Sunday, right? But all we do is professionals go into the lens and say, oh, did the kids see it?

Now? They were asleep. So no, we're gonna close the case and we don't dig in. And if we do dig in. The idea of witnessing domestic violence suggests that it was the violence between the two people and neutralizes it, versus naming the person who did the violence and then describing how they harm the kids through their behaviors.

e, sometimes it's that seems [: 00:18:00

Ali Kessler: That's, it's just very hard to do when you're dealing with narcissism and someone that believes they can do no

David Mandel: wrong. That's, see, and what I wanna say to you that's, that shouldn't be the problem of the court, right? Which is supposed to or child protection system, which are supposed to put an objective lens and in fact include the fact that somebody, and in fact this is very like, again, I'm most familiar right now 'cause I've been working on material for the Australian court that, you look for somebody's parental capacity as part of your decision making.

If somebody's done harm and you can see that. They lack the insight into the harm they've done and they make everything about themselves or what the other person did to them. So you're talking about the narcissistic kind of view,

Ali Kessler: Then

David Mandel: that should work against them in a decision. So yes, the person who did it may be like, I'm great, I'm wonderful.

sional to put all the pieces [: 00:19:00

Employment. Don't look at income. Don't look at how they present

Ali Kessler: paper. Somebody could look fantastic.

David Mandel: Their education. Look at their. Pattern of behavior and don't look at it through an incident baseline, but look at it through the pattern of coercive control.

I agree with all of that. Now, where can everyone get your book?

The easiest place, and I know some people may struggle with it, is Amazon right now. Okay. Always a good. So it's available on amazon.com, so it's it's been there, it's been bestsellers at different times at different categories. We're selling thousands of books.

Very excited.

Ali Kessler: Yeah. I'm actually gonna take a read and see what wisdom you have that I can share with my audience.

David Mandel: That's great. Appreciate that. Yeah,

rap up, what are some of the [: 00:20:00

David Mandel: It's really these things, which is first to get systems to really partner with domestic violence survivors and not blame them.

For what their kids are going through. That's the biggest thing. And the work we do really talks about how systems step by step, can partner better, validate survivor's experience, listen and really collaborate with them around their own safety and their safety of their kids. So that's one of the big hurdles.

And then the other big hurdle is just having higher behavioral expectations as men, as parents. Men deserve that. Their partners do and their kids do that. And that's not about jamming men up. That's about in many cases, helping them be better dads and the dads that they wanna be and their kids want them to be.

Ali Kessler: I think a lot of times women get, they're hysterical. They're this, they're that, like they just don't believe the women, and therefore take the men's side and they ignore all of the red flag.

David Mandel: I think it's it's just to me, we can put all the services in place. We can do a lot of things, but for me, if we don't tackle these differing expectations of.

Mothers [: 00:21:00

But judges have taught me, but judges have taught me also to remember that they they're not investigators that they read pieces of paper. Sure. And they make decisions.

Ali Kessler: The lawyer, it's their job,

David Mandel: it's the lawyers, it's the evaluators, it's the child protection workers. I, we deal a lot with evidence in these systems, and if the evidence is poor or non-existent now in some cases it's there and it's ignored.

Like I get I I don't wanna mi I don't wanna minimize those realities too. But I think to be honest, that one of the biggest issues is just if you ask me to train a judge or report writer. I would train the report writer first. Because the quality of the evidence that goes in front of the judge

Ali Kessler: is then the

David Mandel: tools

Ali Kessler: to make the

David Mandel: decision.

Ali Kessler: That's right.

f the, if any judge gets bad [: 00:22:00

So I'm very see this as a very systemic issue. There's not there's not problematic people at any level or every level, but what we're trying to fix here is that way information moves to the system, the quality of the information, oh, the lawyer knows. Maybe do our mapping tool with a survivor, get the best information from them.

So that you can represent her in the strongest way possible. That's what we're doing, and we're doing it over the world every day, which is, to me is excited.

Ali Kessler: I'm so thankful. I know we had Leah on recently. Yeah. Leah's

David Mandel: amazing.

Ali Kessler: Yeah. And I know that, a lot of people have asked me about the Safe and Together Institute, so I'm gonna put all the contact info in the show notes.

Yeah.

David Mandel: That'd be our podcast with. Partner with a survivor, is in its sixth season, it's with Ruth Raimundo Mandel. We are, we're business partners. We're life partners.

Ali Kessler: That's fantastic.

y talking about her survivor [: 00:23:00

So we, we do interviews and episodes like twice a month. So there's the podcast, there's Safety together institute.com website, there's our virtual academy where you can do online learning immediately.

Ali Kessler: Awesome.

David Mandel: We have conferences, so the book is just I love the book. That's just one part.

I really want people, wherever you're sitting, and we know survivors really love the podcast, so it's easy. It's free. Put that all in

Ali Kessler: the show notes and make sure they should

David Mandel: listen to Ali, your podcast and ours. They shouldn't stop listening to yours.

Ali Kessler: Yeah, no, it, it just serves as a really good resource for people.

I know I get questions every day, so that's why I do this, and yeah, talk to people like you and get, people some help. Yeah,

David Mandel: that's great.

Ali Kessler: So I thank you so much for sharing all of that and thank you. I, I appreciate all the hard work you've done. Yeah, thank you for having me. Absolutely. I can't wait to have you back on, 'cause I'm sure once I read the book I'm gonna have some more questions.

David Mandel: Okay, that's great. Alright,

Ali Kessler: Thank you so much David.

David Mandel: Thank you.

Ali Kessler: Bye. Bye.