Objective: to analyze the family relationship, in childhood and adolescence, of women who
experience conjugal violence. Method: qualitative study. Interviews were held with 19 women, who were experiencing
conjugal violence, and who were resident in a community in Salvador, Bahia,
Brazil. The project was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (N. 42/2011).
Results: the data was organized using the Discourse of the Collective Subject, identifying
the summary central ideas: they witnessed violence between their parents; they
suffered repercussions from the violence between their parents: they were angry
about the mother's submission to her partner; and they reproduced the conjugal
violence. The discourse showed that the women witnessed, in childhood and
adolescence, violence between their parents, and were injured both physically and
psychologically. As a result of the mother's submission, feelings of anger arose
in the children. However, in the adult phase of their own lives, they noticed that
their conjugal life resembled that of their parents, reproducing the violence.
Conclusion: investment is necessary in strategies designed to break inter-generational
violence, and the health professionals are important in this process, as it is a
phenomenon with repercussions in health. Because they work in the Family Health
Strategy, which focuses on the prevention of harm and illness, health promotion
and interdepartmentality, the nurses are essential in the process of preventing
and confronting this phenomenon.