@anongoodnurse There has been no history of violence against the child. PFA are easy to get and are given on very flimsy, if any, evidence. Accusations of DV and some mild drug use are in no way a justification for stopping a child from seeing their father, who would be left to parent their children if small vices and past mistakes could have your children taken away from you. What is best for the child is the consideration here and unless the a parent represents a threat to the child then i consider a child's relationship with both parents to be equally and of paramount importance.

@anongoodnurse OP seems to be looking for a justification to exclude father from the child's life because she considers her own life to be easier/more peaceful should that happen. I don't think that should be the primary concern and I don't think there is a justification for doing it.

@user1450877 - threatening to kill her, jealous/control issues, slapping her and hitting her with a belt when pregnant isn't justification? That's the standard template for the "if I can't have you, no one will" violent stalker tragedies that play out in the news all too frequently.

@PoloHoleSet there has been no violence against the child. You don't know what relationship issues existed, but they have not caused any violence against the child. Contact would be supervised, OP says he is good with the child and cares for her. No reason at all ,except bigoted conjecture, to not let the child see her father.

@user1450877 - so what? Violence against the mother is enough. Nothing "bigoted" in denying access to someone who beats his significant other with a belt, when pregnant. That's called a "track record"-based decision. Wow. The main factor behind "no violence against the child" seems to be the very limited access to her. OP also stated he exhibited erratic, violent and forceful behavior against the mother in front of the child. That is not someone who has demonstrated responsible control. I'm a bit gob-smacked that you think it's okay because he was "only" violent to the mother.

"You don't know what relationship issues existed" - sorry, but there are exactly zero relationship issues that justify domestic violence. Assuming or suggesting that maybe she deserved it is beyond wrong. That you are suggesting that he might have a good excuse for it suggests you probably need some education on issues like this before offering advice.

My concern about this answer is that the father may not have done anything that specifically threatens the child, but he HAS behaved inappropriately when the child is around. This suggests that the father has difficulty understanding how to behave around a child, and that is a red flag for me. Although you are absolutely correct that the mother does not have to be there during the visitation, if I were in her shoes, I would want to be there to make sure I could explain any unusual actions taken by the father during the visitation.

@PoloHoleSet the problems exist solely between the mother and father, not between the father and child. There is no track record of any harm to the child by the father at all. It is bigoted to suggest the punishment for commuting a crime(no actual conviction) that is particularly politically unfashionable should be the removal from your child's life. Actual violent felons are not routinely stripped from their children's lives after being released for their crimes if they are still with their partners, so why should that happen as a matter of course when that relationship breaks down.

@magerber my concern is for children being denied a relationship with one of their parents because the other uses 'inappropriate behaviour' as an excuse to withhold contact when that behaviour, while not good, would not ordinarily cause the authorities to remove a child from a parent's care if the parents were still in a relationship.

@magerber one parent should not be the judge of the standard of behaviour required for the other parent to be in the child's life because they are incapable of making an unbiased decision that is best for the child due to the emotion and conflict of interest.

@user1450877 - Not "inappropriate behavior," domestic violence. If you want to pretend that acts of assault, "only" aimed at the mother, don't affect the entire household and don't put the child at risk, as well, then I'd suggest you really don't know what you are talking about. What he did merits prison time. It is a crime. Actual violent felons are usually required to have no contact, at all, with victims and families of the violence. This isn't a bad breakup.

@ PoloHoleSet I know exactly what I am talking about, I have direct first hand experience of growing up in a household where DV occurred and do not have the biased prevalent narrative of what DV is to cloud my judgement of how it effects the relationship between parents and children. DV occurs in toxic, mutually abusive relationships and is just one single manifestation of abuse and believe me, it's not the worst.

@user1450877 - if you think it only occurs when there is mutual abusiveness, then I'd say your claims of "not clouded" by your own experiences are unfounded. Again, you seem to be claiming that OP somehow deserved to get beaten. Sad.

@user1450877 You're saying there was no violence against the child. The child was inside the mother . If that isn't a threat to the child -- then what is? If the abuser thought the child was so unimportant during gestation, why would anyone think he'd do any better once the child had been born? "sometimes slapped me and threatened to kill me. He hit my arm with a belt while I was pregnant". He's shown exactly who he is and how little he cares about the child and the mum. He failed as a parent.

@PoloHoleSet mutually abusive means they abused each other, violence is one form of abuse and IMO it is not the worst. It doesn't mean that either of them deserved to be abused. Stopping a child from seeing one of their parents is a continuation of the abuse. It isn't a competition of who behaved the worst in a relationship, with the winner getting awarded the child, the relationship between the parents is over, the separate relationship between the parent and the child is not, there has been no abuse in that relationship.

@Willow that abuse took place in the context of the relationship between the two parents, not in the separate relationship between parent and child where that context does not exist and in the OP's own words he is good with the child and cares for her.

@user1450877 - there is nothing to suggest that OP abused the father of her child. That you assume that to be true, without any indication of that, says a lot. Any expert is going to tell you that a violent parent, whether specifically violent to that child, or "just" violent to the other parent, should not have access to the child. If you have any indication from actual experts that this is not the case, you should reference it in your answer.

"DV occurs in toxic, mutually abusive relationships and is just one single manifestation of abuse and believe me, it's not the worst." You have one data point so far: your experience. First, this is nonsense. Abusers don't only abuse other abusers; it depends on the abuser. Even co-dependency does not merit abuse. Second, a child witnessing abuse is permanently scarred. Do a bit of reading of the studies; you'll see why you are needing to defend yourself.

@PoloHoleSet - You may be making assumptions (I don't know; I haven't read every comment.) He may have been the child in an abusive parental home.

@anongoodnurse You are simply ignorant. You believe the heavily politicised, agenda driven narrative of DV pushed by militant feminism. Read about the pioneer Erin Pizzey and how she was marginalised and threatened by feminists because what she discovered about abusive relationships didn't fit that woman as the sole victim narrative.

DV is terrible but I can tell you when it comes to abuse i would rather someone punch me in the face every day than to withhold contact from my children out of malice.

@user1450877 - There is a "be nice" policy across all of Stack Exchange. It's fine to disagree with me; it's not fine to characterize me as ignorant just because we disagree. And, yes, we do disagree. Yes, women are often assumed to be victims when they may in fact be initiators, but you should be hesitant to categorize such a broad topic as domestic abuse as being only of one variety.