Intimate Partner Violence Among Pregnant Young Women

Abstract

This article explores intimate partner violence (IPV) as experienced by young women during the perinatal period. Using purposive sampling, data pertaining to the experiences of 10 young mothers were gathered through on-site participative observation and individual in-depth interviews. Interviews were coded in an inductive way to reflect the experiences of the participants before pregnancy and following pregnancy confirmation. Overall, the analyses of different manifestations of IPV and their contexts reveal the difficulty these young mothers experience in identifying themselves as a victim of IPV and in categorizing their partner's acts as intimate violence. The fear of family separation and the desire to protect their child contributed to the complexity of violence experienced in a context of motherhood. This article also reflects on the limits of data collection on this subject through comparison of the results of the interviews with the results of the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS-2). Further research is needed to provide more insight into victimization among young mothers and to inform interventions with the goal of helping young women overcome the intersecting challenges of violence and motherhood.

Intimate partner problems and suicide: are we missing the violence?

“…Levesque and Chamberland found that overall, young mothers find it difficult to identify themselves as victims of IPV and label their partner’s actions as violent. 48 Identification of IPV when risk factors, even when victims and perpetrators are in denial, is important in treating co-morbidity as in the example of drug abuse treatment and IPV. With separation and divorce being a triggering event for violence in a relationship, court professionals bear responsibility in identifying when there are IPPs and IPVs and change course accordingly.…”

Factors related to parenting confidence among pregnant women experiencing intimate partner violence.

“…Specifically, mothers experiencing prenatal violence report worrying that IPV is harming the growth and health of their baby in utero, including concerns that the baby is aware of and experiencing problematic effects from the violence (Alhusen & Wilson, 2015). Research also indicates that pregnant women recognize the negative effect that IPV can have on children and try to modify their behavior to protect their baby (Alhusen & Wilson, 2015; Lévesque & Chamberland, 2016). Such findings show that pregnant women recognize the gravity of IPV exposure on their unborn children and try to prioritize the safety of the baby, yet these proactive behaviors are interwoven with worry about their ability to protect the baby and fears for the baby’s development.…”

Violence and adversity among pregnant women and new mothers in central Vietnam

“…A recent systematic review of 92 studies indicated that women abused prepregnancy have four times higher odds of being a victim of IPV during pregnancy than peers without IPV history (James et al, 2013). The reasons for this phenomenon remain uncertain; however, it is likely that the women are stressed by parenthood responsibilities (Alio et al, 2013) and the unborn child's wellbeing when living with an abusive partner (Sylvie & Claire, 2015). They also experience mixed emotions between leaving the aggressive partners to protect the child (Engnes et al, 2012).…”

“…Although many studies found a binary association between young maternal age and high prevalence of p-IPV, some studies found that this association became nonsignificant after controlling in the multivariate analysis (Finnbogadottir et al, 2016b;Globevnik Velikonja et al, 2018;Iliyasu et al, 2013). This may occur because young women (<25 years old) are more likely to be sexually abused (Miller et al, 2014;Sylvie & Claire, 2015) and be reproductively controlled by partners, which correlates with unwanted pregnancy (Miller et al, 2010). Therefore, young age could be considered a confounder of p-IPV in some societies, and this requires careful control in future investigation.…”