The report on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) released in June 2025, relies on tired, male-gendered tropes that skew its findings and may mislead the public and policymakers.
It reports that in 2022, one in three Australian men used IPV, mostly against their female partners or family members. According to the study, these figures indicate a worsening trend compared to the previous report in 2013-2014, in which one in four men used IPV.
Summary Critique
The AIFS report, part of AIFS’s Ten to Men longitudinal study, reinforces outdated gender stereotypes in its portrayal of IPV as male-only. It ignores female factors associated with all forms of IPV, including parental alienating behaviours as a form of coercive control. Men and women, and mothers and fathers, equally use parental alienating behaviours.
The report is deeply flawed, best described as misleading, and gender-discriminatory for ignoring the roles women may play in perpetrating IPV and coercive control. Notably absent is any mention of parental alienating behaviours. These behaviours are a form of emotional abuse and control that research suggests is used by both mothers and fathers.
Proponents of gendered family violence will use this research to call for even more punitive and discriminatory laws. This research falls short by not telling the whole story. It is the wrong platform for policy, guidance, and legal changes.
The AIFS is simply recycling a simplistic narrative that casts women and children solely as victims. They undermine more balanced, evidence-based understandings of family violence. We call for future studies to include the experiences of all genders, especially in cases involving alienation and coercive control.
What the AIFS report is not telling us
- Women engage in IPV against their male partners at nearly equal prevalence with certain types of coercive control (parental alienating behaviours). They are also significantly represented in other forms of IPV against men and children. The AIFS research does not investigate female IPV and its links to male health or male IPV.
- One of the largest categories of suicide deaths is men suffering family relationship breakdowns from separation and divorce. In Australia, women are involved in manufacturing some of those relationship ruptures. Their behaviours are a coercive-controlling form of IPV against men. It was within the AIFS’s capability to address the situational factors leading to suicide. But the AIFS chose not to.
- IPV is also intergenerationally transmitted to male children by exposure to emotionally abusive mothers. The AIFS study only investigated links with abusive fathers. It is misleading only to examine the factors with which the AIFS agrees.
Female IPV Against Men: The Other Untold Story
This research and its parent research program, Ten-to-Men, do not tell the story of female IPV. Women use particular forms of coercive control (parental alienating behaviours) at a similar prevalence to men. Studies show that men are also victims of female IPV. Some international studies show that a quarter of women and 11% of men report being survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) during their lifetimes[i].
The AIFS’s failure to address female IPV, especially female emotional abuse and coercive control, misdirects the reader. By excluding female IPV, readers may conclude that adverse male health and male violence are only related to male factors and not to their exposure to female violence and emotional abuse.
The AIFS study gives a free pass to abusive and violent women. The AIFS dogmatic approach cannot recognise that women and mothers can also be emotionally abusive and that their behaviour is harmful to both male and female children.
Are Suicidal Men Potential IPV Perpetrators?
The AIFS study does not explore situational factors for suicidality, such as family relationship ruptures due to separation and divorce. It excludes the possibility of a linkage between female coercive control, suicidality and men’s use of IPV. In certain circumstances, a type of coercive control may induce suicide in both men and women. Such induced or coerced suicide could be considered proxy murder[i]. This presentation requires further research.
It is inappropriate, if not unethical, to design a research program using suicidal men as a variable without also inquiring into the psychosocial nature of that suicide. Such a simplistic research design leads to shallow results. The outcome, “Men who had had suicidal thoughts, plans or attempts were 47% more likely to use IPV against their partner” is one example. It implies that suicidal men are also likely to be IPV perpetrators, simply because they are suicidal. This conclusion is misleading and is not the whole story.
What Happens When You Are the Son of an Abusive Mother?
Many studies into the linkage between childhood exposure to emotional abuse, emotional maltreatment, and domestic and family violence identify a link with children, who then go on to perpetrate forms of IPV as adults[i]. Many of these studies do not differentiate by gender. They are open to the assumption that male children become violent adults because they witnessed their mothers being subjected to family violence by their fathers.
On the other hand, the absence of gender differentiation leaves the question open to male children becoming violent, misogynistic adults after exposure to female violence, emotional neglect, and maltreatment. Overall, the literature implies that any severe family violence, including maternal coercion and emotional abuse, may lead to future IPV.
There is growing recognition of the prevalence of abuse against men from emotionally abusive mothers[ii]. There is much research in this field available to the AIFS suggesting adverse mental health outcomes and misogynistic views because of emotionally abusive mothering. The AIFS study could have explored this dimension. Instead, they focused only on how children, especially male children, may socially learn abusive and misogynistic behaviours from witnessing their fathers’ abuse of their mothers.
Conclusion: The AIFS Misled the Public with Biased Research
The AIFS chose to mislead the public with an adverse male-gendered view. They did not investigate factors that could have provided a more nuanced, if not different, guidance to policymakers. Their study poses difficult questions for the AIFS.
- Why did the AIFS only research factors associated with male-gendered IPV?
- Why did the AIFS not investigate links between male-gendered IPV and female-gendered emotional abuse and maltreatment?
- How does the AIFS justify demonising suicidal men as IPV perpetrators using research bias to demonstrate its preconceived conclusion?
The most plausible reason is that the AIFS, similarly to the National Suicide Prevention Strategy[i], had already decided that men are violent because of their gender. They were already addicted to the extremist gendered violence cult’s dogma, and their research program was designed to confirm their adherence to it.
Implications for the AIFS Research
This approach enables the AIFS to overlook the harm that such biased and poorly designed research can cause. It empowers the AIFS to ignore research that does not support their dogma. Their study may mislead policymakers to recommend initiatives to screen suicidal, depressed, and anxious men seeking help as IPV perpetrators. So, why would men seek help when support services’ priority is to establish whether they are violent instead of saving their lives?
New Policy Directions to Address All Forms of IPV
We need public policies to address all forms of IPV, not just the politically attractive ones.
- Service providers to men and women seeking help must guarantee that they will not screen or treat men or women as potential perpetrators without a valid reason.
- Family law and family violence legislation must be de-gendered and de-politicised, not just in the words used but in the interpretation of the law[i].
- There should be no preventive protective measures taken without investigation.
A public health approach considers a social issue, such as IPV, as a multifaceted problem that affects the population in various ways. Such an approach considers the situational, demographic, social, and economic factors relevant to any presentations that require a collective social response.
Policy Implications
Research into parental alienating behaviours demonstrates that this is independent of gender, occurs more or less equally across all genders, across different forms of employment, education, age, sexuality, etc. So, using these types of social determinants simply doesn’t work as a basis for policy laws about emotional maltreatment, abuse and coercive control in family relationships, that deliberately rupture the parent-child relationship.
Policy development should not assume that a socio-economic issue such as IPV is only related to demographic factors such as gender, but may require responses addressing how relational power is abused in family settings, regardless of gender.
[i] Korosi, S. (2025). The End of Gendered Policy: A New Public Policy Framework for Alienation in Families (Parental Alienation). Advance. https://doi.org/10.31124/advance.174524965.51184766/v1
[i] Korosi, S. (2025, 24 March). NOT A National Suicide Prevention Strategy For Parental Alienation! https://dialogueingrowth.com.au/not-a-national-suicide-prevention-strategy-for-parental-alienation/
[i] Mbilinyi, L. F., Logan-Greene, P. B., Neighbors, C., Walker, D. D., Roffman, R. A., & Zegree, J. (2012). EXPOSURE TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND CHILDHOOD EMOTIONAL ABUSE: Childhood Domestic Violence Exposure among a Community Sample of Adult Perpetrators: What Mediates the Connection? J Aggress Maltreat Trauma, 21(2), 171–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926771.2012.639203
[ii] Goldsmith, B. (2023). Being the Son of an Abusive Mother. Psychology Today.
[i] Korosi, S. (2024). Proxy Murder: How Parental Alienating Behaviours Lead to Suicide. https://dialogueingrowth.com.au/proxy-murder-how-parental-alienating-behaviours-lead-to-suicide/
[i] Adair-Russell, R., Reed, K., & Torres, M. F. (2025). The Role of Defendant Gender and PTSD Diagnosis in a Battered Spouse Case. J Interpers Violence, 40(5-6), 1112–1134. https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605241257594
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