Women, motherhood, and intimate partner violence

Sarah Chivers

doi:10.7273/000005816

Several decades of feminist activism, public attention, research, policies, and program interventions have attempted to address the scope of intimate partner violence and its deleterious effects on society, but the majority of this attention and research has centered on the experiences of middle class White women. This dissertation considers variability in the risk of intimate partner violence among five groups of young, low-income, first time mothers who vary by race, ethnicity, and nationality. Respondents come from a national health program, the Nurse-Family Partnership, which promotes prenatal care for first time mothers and establishes healthy behaviors between parents as infants develop. Drawing from an intersectional framework, I consider heterogeneity in risk of violence among first generation Latinas, Black women, White women, second generation Latinas, and immigrant women from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. I examine structural differences in their social locations and relate this to their risk of experiencing violence by a partner. I consider whether a widely used methodological tool, the Conflict Tactic Scales 2, is appropriate for estimating violence experienced by women of diverse backgrounds. Principal components factor analysis is used to reduce the 39 items of the CTS2 to five factors to measure partner violence among women. Descriptive data show diverse and dynamic constellations of family and gender relations that translate to different levels of risk of partner violence among women. Regression analyses show that immigrant women are less likely to experience abuse by an intimate than U.S. born women. Black women are more likely than White women to experience partner violence; second generation Latinas are less likely to be abused. Factors associated with partner violence are being younger, having higher levels of education, moving frequently in the past year, having low levels of partner support, and experiencing high levels of stress and a past history of trauma. The reporting of sexual coercion without physical force is a common pattern among women in each group, which may indicate that it is an underlying mechanism of control that opens the door for escalating levels of partner violence and abuse.

Women, motherhood, and intimate partner violence

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