Growing Up with Intimate Partner Violence at Home: Adolescents’ Narratives on Their Coping Strategies

Abstract

Purpose The research on adolescents who have grown up around intimate partner violence (IPV) between their parents or caregivers has mostly focused on adolescent’s victimization experiences and the negative impact of this type of violence on their mental health. More research is needed on how they respond to these experiences. The aim of this study is to understand adolescents’ coping strategies regarding IPV between their parents or caregivers, from their perspectives. Methods The participants were ten adolescents between 12 and 17 years old (4 female and 6 male), users of protection programs in Chile. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, using thematic narrative analysis afterward. Results The results show seven coping strategies: intervention, social support seeking, protective role, positive resignification, hypervigilance, escape-avoidance, and denial. The narratives of the adolescents indicate that they face not only specific episodes of IPV but also the consequences and family dynamics that accompany this type of violence. Conclusion Adolescents’ coping strategies can be organized in a continuum of IPV integration-distancing, based on the degree and form of involvement in the experience. Growing up with IPV at home demands an early development of the sense of agency and taking a position in the face of violence, transitioning between active and victim roles.

The Narrative Shelter for Young People with Childhood Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence: A Concept for Creating Opportunities for Storytelling, Storylistening, and Resilience

“…CEIPV studies, which include YP, often portray them as being defined by harmful experiences lived in childhood and damaged witnesses to violence (Adhia et al, 2019;Whatley, 2019), failing to explore the meanings of or responses to such experiences. As a result, these gaps in the literature prevent a complete understanding of the nuances and complexities of CEIPV (Miranda et al, 2023). Furthermore, a recent meta-synthesis which looked at the nature and extent of qualitative research conducted in the last two decades with children about their CEIPV confirmed that they did not have adequate opportunities to talk, be listened to, and taken seriously (Noble-Carr et al, 2020.…”

impact of domestic violence on cognitive and psychological development of children: A scoping review

“…Domestic violence has a very bad effect on children (Ragavan et al, 2018). As for children who are raised in families or environments that experience domestic violence, they will experience stunted development, for example in terms of social maturity (Miranda et al, 2022). Children will tend to find it difficult to develop feelings of peace and calm, will always feel afraid, find it difficult to interact with other people, and tend to be more aggressive when playing with their peers (Lamela et al, 2021).…”