“Love the kin you’re in?”: Kin network responses to women and children experiencing intimate partner violence

Abstract

Intimate partner violence is often known to a wider social network. Still little research exists on the experiences of social networks, how they respond and how women and children experiencing intimate partner violence perceive these responses. This article draws on 16 qualitative interviews with women victims of intimate partner violence, intimate partner violence-exposed children and their relatives in three kin networks. The overall aim of this article is to study responses to intimate partner violence from a multivocal perspective where the possibly concurring and conflicting perspectives of both the victims and the networks are heard. More specifically, the article explores what responses are perceived as possible/impossible to end violence and create safety for women and children. The article shows how masculinity, in intersection with kin position and age, figures both as an obstacle and a possibility to end intimate partner violence. Moreover, the article shows that responses are shaped from intersections of age, kin and gender in victims, more specifically understandings of maturity and adulthood of female victims and how this linked to responsible motherhood. The study provided insights into responses to intimate partner violence as co-constructed in a wider social network and how a focus on multivocality may be useful for understanding the multidimensional character of responses to intimate partner violence.

Towards understanding the Nordic paradox: A review of qualitative interview studies on intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) in Sweden

“…Simultaneously, such studies and tendencies may strengthen assumptions of existing gender equality and divert focus from structural relationships of power. In the interest of enabling focus on diverse relationships of dominance and violence without losing structural perspectives, intersectional approaches (de los Reyes & Mulinari, ) on IPV have been recommended and applied in several studies under review (Agevall, ; Brännvall, ; Eriksson & Ulmestig, ; Gottzén & Korkmaz, ; Keskinen, ; Sandberg, ; Törnqvist, ; Ulmestig & Eriksson, ). In efforts to elucidate individually or socially oriented causative factors, as well as structural ones, intersectional perspectives should also be applied in quantitative IPVAW research.…”

“…The impact of IPVAW on the health (Örmon, Torstensson Levander, Sunnqvist, & Bahtsevani, ; Scheffer Lindgren & Renck, ), economy (Eriksson & Ulmestig, ; Ulmestig & Eriksson, ), and working life (Alsaker et al, ) of victims has been analyzed. Experiences and narratives of male IPV perpetrators (Boethius, ; Edin & Nilsson, ; Gottzén, ; Gottzén, ; Gottzén, , , ; Håland, Lundgren, Lidén, & Eri, ; Hydén, , , 1995; Jansson, ; Lennéer‐Axelson, [1989]; Lundgren, ) and victims (Hellgren, Andersson, & Burcar Alm, ; Nybergh, Enander, & Krantz, ; Simmons, Brüggemann, & Swahnberg, ) have also been studied, as has the importance of social networks for responses to IPVAW (Hydén, ; Hydén, ; Sandberg, ).…”

“…Distinctions between IPVAW and HRV point, further, to the importance of family members as supporters of violence in the latter. Studies show that while supportive social networks can be crucial for survival from IPVAW in Sweden (e.g., Ekström, 2011;Flinck et al, 2005;Jarnkvist, 2015;Scheffer Lindgren & Renck, 2008a), social responses are diverse (Hydén, 2015;Sandberg, 2016) and include contribution to IPVAW by parents and other social contacts through downplaying violence and supporting perpetrators (Alsaker et al, 2016;Edin et al, 2010;Engnes & Lundgren, 2013;Gottzén & Korkmaz, 2013;Green, 2002;Hopstadius, 2014;Münger, 2009;Rejmer et al, 2010;Wiklund et al, 2010). Disclosure or reporting of IPVAW has been seen to bring shame or upheaval to families and social circles (Agevall, 2012;Edin et al, 2010;Green, 2002), while reminiscent of renderings of HRV, young Swedish IPVAW victims describe processes of "dwindling life space" due to violation (Wiklund et al, 2010).…”

“…While the power of "being a man" may be confirmed through IPVAW (Edin, 2006), other norms pose that IPVAW is not a legitimate feature of a "real man," who should practice self-control, care for his family (Edin & Nilsson, 2014;Gottzén, 2013b), and be gender equal (Gottzén, 2016). Protecting women from other men's violence is constructed as heroic masculinity (Gottzén & Korkmaz, 2013), as masculinity is framed as both problem and solution (Sandberg, 2016). The assumed acceptability of male violence has further depended on the femininity of the woman, on whether she was weaker than the man or strong and thus "beatable" (Gottzén & Korkmaz, 2013).…”

Representation of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Swedish News Media: A Discourse Analysis

“…Indeed, in this study, the societal failure category shifts part of the responsibility for IPVAW onto institutions such as the police or health care. Furthermore, representations of the family of the victim sometimes trying to help and sometimes forming part of the problem are in line with a growing area of research into the positive and negative impacts on the victims' and/or perpetrators' families, on IPVAW, and the victim's possibility to leave the relationship (Hydén, 2015;Sandberg, 2016).…”