Falling for the Ones That Were Abusive: Cycles of Violence in Low-Income Women’s Intimate Relationships

Abstract

This study examines low-income women’s cycles of lifelong violence victimization. A qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with 24 low-income women living in Eastern Washington State illustrates the complexity of abusive interpersonal relationships, and the decision-making processes that abused women utilize to escape violence. The data illustrate patterns of a discursive process of normalization, wherein early experiences of violence socialized women to treat abuse as a normal and expected component of adult intimate unions. The normalization of abuse also set the stage for later abuse within intimate relationships to be downplayed. The participants’ narratives demonstrate victims’ efforts to interrupt cycles of violence by identifying protection of children and partners’ other problematic behaviors as motivators in terminating their relationships. Abuse itself, however, is rarely stated as a main reason for victims to leave their abusers. The study’s findings also highlight the importance of utilizing alternative sampling strategies, as the sample of domestic violence victims was not recruited via victim support services, but rather for a study of economic strain. The patterns elucidate the multiple ways in which abuse goes unrecognized and unreported within marginalized communities. These findings also provide insight for those within the victim advocacy network and researchers of domestic violence by showcasing the experiences of victims who are often excluded from studies of domestic violence. To those who work actively in the field, this study serves as a call to action to widen sampling strategies and examine abuse in ways that better fit victims’ understandings and experiences of intimate partner and domestic violence.

Keywords

children exposed to domestic violence domestic violence perceptions of domestic violence intergenerational transmission of trauma violence exposure battered women

Introduction

Oftentimes when domestic violence disputes are highlighted in the media or in everyday life, a common question asked is, “Why did she stay?” Studies of public perception have uncovered the pervasive belief that women are capable of exiting violent relationships, and that failure to do so implies victim’s consent for continued abuse (Taylor & Sorenson, 2005; Worden & Carlson, 2005). While leaving an abusive relationship may seem like an easy decision, this perspective fails to consider the history of abuse that a woman may have, and its influence on her ability to leave. In addition, making the decision to leave is not an immediate response that one makes after a single incident of violence, but rather it is often the culmination of a process of experiencing a gradual increase of violent behavior (Murray, Crowe, & Flasch, 2015).

Although findings on the influence of an abused woman’s history of domestic violence are mixed (see Anderson & Saunders, 2003, for a review), there is evidence that shows childhood abuse has lasting effects into adulthood (e.g., Edelson, 1999; Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). Growing up in a household where violence is prevalent and tolerated can teach a child to also tolerate violence from loved ones. The early exposure to violence can serve to normalize intimate partner abuse, and foster an expectation of abuse from intimate partners in one’s life. The normalization of domestic abuse is seen in how women discuss their experiences, through downplaying the impacts of an abusive marriage and describing abuse as simply the consequence of the decision to marry. However, parenthood often provides the opportunity for women to negotiate their situations to protect their children from a partner’s abuse. In this way, women can attempt to interrupt the cycle of violence from continuing into their children’s lives, and potentially mediate the effects that a history of violence can have for them. Needless to say, the common rhetoric of victim-blaming, in which people interpret the public issue of domestic violence as a personal problem (Berns, 1999; Mills, 1959; Worden & Carlson, 2005), fails to recognize the complexity of situations like these.

Results of this study highlight the complexity of abusive interpersonal relationships, shedding light on the decision-making processes that women undergo. Based on qualitative interviews with low-income women, this article examines women’s lived experiences with lifelong cycles of intimate violence. We demonstrate the ways that women learn to treat violent behavior as normal and expected within relationships, and go on to tolerate abuse throughout their lives. The exposure to violence in childhood—through the direct experience of abuse or by witnessing interparental domestic violence—can be the onset of a cycle of victimization that carries on throughout a woman’s life. Through experiencing or witnessing violent behavior as young girls, women in the present study often learned to tolerate abuse. The patterns that arose in this research elucidate a gendered cycle of victimization, rather than perpetration, in interpersonal relationships, which existing literature has not studied extensively. This study contributes to existing literature regarding the cycle of victimization by offering a lens into the experiences of women with histories of abuse, and illustrating the processes they undergo in navigating abusive relationships throughout their lives. We demonstrate the complexity that exists within families afflicted by violence and explore the mechanisms that contribute to the reproduction of victimization across generations.

Background

Intimate Partner Violence

The prevalence of intimate partner violence and the high rates at which women will experience it makes this a grave public health issue (Breiding et al., 2014; Browne, Salomon, & Bassuk, 1999; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016; Rennison, DeKeseredy, & Dragiewicz, 2013). Oftentimes, it can be difficult for victims to fully acknowledge the extent to which the abuse affects them. Mental health effects, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, have been shown to lead to low levels of social support, diminished self-esteem, reduced quality of life, and decreased social problem-solving skills (Beck et al., 2014).

While the clinical definitions of intimate partner violence are widely used by researchers who study domestic violence, it is also important to think of the subjective definitions and understandings of abuse that exist among victims. For example, a woman may not identify as a victim of abuse if asked by a researcher, but later may indicate that she has been “slapped around” by her partner. In cases where a disconnect between understandings arises, researchers must be able to frame instances of abuse in ways that may be more recognizable to someone for whom violence in intimate relationships has been normalized. Pence and Paymar’s (1993) power and control wheel identifies eight mechanisms that abusers utilize, and many of which victims fail to recognize as forms of abuse. Therefore, in addition to acknowledging how victims identify their abuse, this article uses the definition of abuse as outlined in the power and control wheel.

Recognizing the ways in which victims of intimate partner violence internalize their victimization and downplay the impacts of abuse is important for understanding how agency is enacted in the navigation of abusive relationships. As Hattery and Smith (2017) discuss, although many people believe abused women have no agency or do not know how to make good choices, in most cases, this is not true. In fact, they often have a clear understanding of the trade-offs they are making and act in ways that will give them what they need most in the moment. Life course scholars have discussed the role of agency in decision making, and the influence that early life experiences have on the “exercise of situationally based judgement” (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 994). The use of past experiences in the evaluation of choice and decision making—wherein early experiences create schemas that people draw upon when faced with similar situations—is crucial to understanding the choices made by women in cycles of victimization. When they are in an abusive relationship, women often use what they know in choosing what action to take. This usually means that they either follow the same script that they were taught early in life, or they act in a way that goes against what they know. As the narratives of the women in this study will show, the experience of early abuse tends to be linked to the enactment of agency in later life decisions, whether they fully recognize it or not.

The Impact of Childhood Abuse

Life course scholars suggest that values, skills, and behaviors learned early in life tend to be linked to later life experiences through interpersonal interactions and the environments in which they are associated (McLeod & Almazan, 2003). Accordingly, the intergenerational transmission (IGT) of violence,¹ or the cycle of violence theory,² is derived from social learning theory, which posits that children learn behavior through the direct behavioral conditioning and imitation of behavior that they have observed and/or have seen rewarded by others (Bandura, 1977). Thus, children who grow up in families in which they have been abused or witnessed interparental violence are socialized to understand violence as a normal component of intimate relationships and are more likely to imitate these behaviors, compared with children who grow up in nonviolent homes. Ehrensaft and colleagues (2003) find that when boys grow up in abusive homes, their risk of becoming perpetrators of intimate partner violence increases substantially compared with those who do not experience childhood abuse. Similarly, children (especially girls) who are exposed to these types of violence are more likely to tolerate this behavior and become revictimized in adulthood. Approximately 46% of female victims of childhood abuse grow up to be battered in adulthood, and are also twice as likely to experience intimate partner violence as adults, compared with women who were not physically assaulted as children (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). Although previous studies demonstrate the high rates at which girls and women are victimized, they do not fully account for the contextual factors associated with these patterns. Our study adds to this literature by illustrating the discursive processes that abused women utilize in navigating repeated victimization by multiple abusers.

As Hattery and Smith (2017) note, although some critics of the IGT of violence say that the term implies a genetic transmission, the cycle of violence is in fact reproduced because violent behavior is taught to children by the ways in which parents or caretakers navigate their intimate relationships. Because the family is a powerful agent of socialization for both positive and negative behavior (Langley, 1991; LaViolette & Barnett, 2014), parents condition their children through the exposure to violence. In turn, the likelihood for children to replicate what they have seen once they form their own relationships is increased.

While the majority of research regarding the IGT of violence is generally centered around the perpetration of violence (e.g., Black, Sussman, & Unger, 2010; Franklin & Kercher, 2012; O’Keefe, 1998; Widom, 1989), there is a need to focus on victimization in adulthood as an outcome of the cycle of violence. Tjaden and Thoennes (2000) report findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey in which at least half (51.9%) of the surveyed women disclosed having been physically assaulted as a child by a parent or adult caretaker. In addition, 17.6% of all the women surveyed report being a victim of rape (completed or attempted) and more than half (54%) of them experienced it before the age of 18. Although the rates of childhood abuse are high, only direct physical assaults are considered in Tjaden and Thoennes’s (2000) report.

Edelson (1999) recognizes the importance of children’s exposure to adult domestic violence; in addition to the direct eye witnessing of adult physical violence, the author includes hearing the events and seeing the aftermath in his definition of how children experience domestic violence. Both the direct and indirect exposure negatively affect children, including behavioral, emotional, cognitive-functioning, and other developmental problems. Although children’s exposure to marital violence has come to be considered a form of psychological maltreatment or trauma (Kilpatrick, Litt, & Williams, 1997; Somer & Braunstein, 1999), parents often underestimate the amount of violence that children have seen or heard (O’Brien, John, Margolin, & Erel, 1994; Tomkins et al., 1994).

Nonetheless, Edelson (1999) notes that there are gendered effects in the resulting behaviors of the affected children, wherein boys tend to demonstrate more externalizing behaviors, while girls show more internalized behaviors. The implications are that children begin to normalize the violence but react in gender-specific ways. The experience of violence, particularly child sexual and physical abuse, influences the types of relationships an individual will form as an adult (Bell, 2003; Elliot, Avery, Fishman, & Hoshiko, 2002; English, 1998). Cherlin, Burton, Hurt, and Purvin (2004) find that women who experienced the trauma of physical and sexual childhood abuse, as well as witnessing adult domestic and sexual violence, are less likely to be in healthy, sustained marital or cohabiting unions and are more likely to have experienced abuse in their intimate relationships. Furthermore, those who have experienced abuse beginning in childhood are more likely to go through transitory unions, or multiple short-term relationships. Despite these patterns of women going from one abusive relationship to another, Potter (2008) finds that abused women oftentimes learn how to escape relationships and their abusers more quickly, and thus subsequent unions tend to be of a shorter duration.

As this analysis demonstrates, the normalization of violent behavior is associated with women downplaying the extent of the abuse they have experienced. In dealing with their experiences of abuse, women are often put in a position where they need to negotiate their situations and decide what action to take next. Although Anderson and Saunders (2003) note that findings of the influence of childhood violence are inconsistent for determining the likelihood that a woman will escape her abusive relationship, they argue that a history of violence may strengthen her determination to leave. This study will expand upon the existing, but varied, literature and illustrate some of the ways that exposure to childhood abuse creates a pathway to abuse in adulthood, as well as how the cycle of victimization is reproduced through the processes that women utilize in navigating their interpersonal relationships.

The Process of Leaving an Abusive Relationship

While leaving an abusive relationship may seem like an easy decision to some (e.g., Worden & Carlson, 2005), the reality is that in most cases, leaving is not an immediate response or a decision that is made after a single incident. Rather, making the choice and taking the steps to leave is part of a process. Scholars have noted several factors that are involved in the decision-making processes that women undergo in staying in, or leaving, an abusive relationship. External factors that have been shown to influence the process of leaving include existing in a patriarchal and sexist society, a woman’s economic dependency, shortcomings within the criminal justice system, and inadequate social support from community agencies and workplaces (Barnett, 2000, 2001; Kim & Gray, 2008). Internal factors that also influence women’s decision making include processes and effects of socialization, victim traits, and psychological and victimization effects, such as fear conditioning and post-traumatic stress disorder (Barnett, 2001), as well as the internal moral conflict between self-sacrifice and self-preservation (Belknap, 1999). These external and internal factors must be considered when examining how abused women weigh their options and make the choice of whether to leave the relationship.

While the responsibility that abused women have for others (e.g., husbands, children, other family members) is often an important motivator for staying or leaving, the fear of increased and/or intensified violence toward themselves and their children, both directly and indirectly, is often discussed by victims of intimate partner abuse (Belknap, 1999; Murray et al., 2015). As a result, Belknap (1999) asks, “Must a woman believe her life to be at stake in order for her to make choices that protect self and to feel that such a choice is morally correct?” (p. 402). While studies also find that abused women repeatedly report fearing for their lives, there are other common themes that help to persuade women to take action, which scholars call triggers or turning points (Baly, 2010; Murray et al., 2015). In addition to the fear of more violence, other turning points include a shift in a woman’s perspective regarding her partner, relationship, and/or abuse; learning more about the dynamics of abuse; experiencing an intervention from others; realizing the impact that the violence has on children; and termination of the relationship (Murray et al., 2015). These turning points are often what victims of intimate partner abuse cite as giving them the excuse to take action, whether that means leaving the relationship or seeking help from external sources. Baly (2010) argues that abused women need these triggers “both to overcome their own misgivings about the course of action they were taking and to help explain their actions to external observers, including friends, family members, and authority figures who were unsupportive or critical of the decision to leave” (p. 2310).

Similar to other qualitative studies on the process of leaving an abusive relationship (see Anderson & Saunders, 2003, for a review), this study attempts to understand the discursive processes that women use to illustrate the normalization of interpersonal abuse throughout the life course. Unlike many of the studies on the processes of leaving, the women in this study did not express a sense of fearing for their lives or fearing increased or intensified violence as their reason for leaving. Instead, they relied on other triggers, most notably a shift in perspective of their partner or relationship, and the impact that the violence had on their children.

Sampling Strategies for Studying Victims of Domestic Violence

Most research on intimate partner violence tends to be based on samples of women accessing support services such as domestic violence relief and/or housing aid (Anderson & Saunders, 2003). Data typically come from shelters (Johnson, 1995; Moe & Bell, 2004), clinical samples (Beck et al., 2014), official records (Jewkes, 2002) and particularly, government assistance recipients (Purvin, 2007; Scott, London, & Myers, 2002). In Anderson and Saunders’s (2003) review of studies on the process of leaving abusive relationships, only three of the 23 quantitative studies and three of 28 qualitative studies did not sample from battered women’s shelters or other support service centers (e.g., women seeking counseling and legal services with county attorney’s offices, medical services, police/social services records). Some studies even obtain their samples based on recommendations from counselors in domestic violence charities or social workers in various support service centers (Baly, 2010; Holt, 1995). The purposive sampling of women from these types of support services is highly useful in attaining a sample of victims and illuminating the experiences and difficulties they have endured, while allowing for a look at the various obstacles they must navigate in addition to the abuse. Understanding the obstacles that women face is necessary for the study of intimate partner violence victimization, especially given the fact that it takes women an average of five to seven attempts to permanently escape an abuser (Okun, 1986; The National Domestic Violence Hotline, 2013). However, as Anderson and Saunders (2003) note, there is a need to “focus more on women who are more representative of the population and not part of help-seeking samples” (p. 185).

Within the literature on domestic abuse and women seeking assistance, many of the samples are taken from large cities and urban areas, which are inherently distinct from small towns and rural areas. Although women from both types of communities encounter obstacles in their attempts to access resources, Hall-Sanchez (2016) cites studies which have found that

rural women often have less social support resources (Rennison et al., 2013) and confront social and geographic isolation, absence of or inadequate reliable transportation (Lewis, 2003), and are less likely to be insured, limiting access to health care services (Basile & Black, 2011). (p. 273)

Although existing studies have provided much insight into the experiences of victims of intimate partner violence, it is important to highlight the narratives of those who do not seek these types of services, especially those from smaller cities and rural areas. Many women do not turn to shelters, clinics, or other support centers, despite the abuse they endure. The inclusion of their experiences is necessary for demonstrating that the abuse that occurs behind closed doors is not always revealed to those trained to provide support, yet they are equally important to the discussion. The majority of women in this study, who were sampled based on economic stress versus history of abuse, discussed histories of abuse throughout their lives without being specifically prompted on this topic. This finding alone signifies a need to explore domestic abuse outside of support settings. There are multiple reasons why victims choose not to seek help, such as the inaccessibility or unavailability of services, the belief that circumstances do not require outside assistance, victim’s familiarity in dealing with abuse, or fear of reprisal. Yet their experiences are vital to achieving a fuller understanding of the mechanisms that create and reproduce victimization.

This study contributes to the existing research regarding the cycle of victimization and tolerance of intimate partner abuse through the use of a nonpurposive sample of victims of domestic violence. The participants for this study were chosen because of their status as low-income residents who were willing to share some of their experiences with economic stress during the Great Recession. Their interviews uncovered patterns of violence and victimization, and highlight the fact that not all victims of domestic abuse regularly seek assistance, and many never go to shelters to escape their abusers.

This study also fills a gap in the existing literature by providing an in-depth look at how victims of abuse navigate complex processes of abuse, escape, and revictimization, and how abuse is perpetuated in a cyclical fashion within families. The analysis examines the association between childhood exposure to violence and tolerance of abuse in adult intimate unions. The participants’ narratives illustrate the ways in which violent behavior is normalized, its impacts downplayed, and action for self-protection negotiated. The narratives aid in illuminating an aspect of their lives that many downplayed, yet which proved to be significant and impactful on their own and their children’s experiences of intimate relationships. This article further illustrates the importance of including context within studies of domestic violence, including family histories and previous experiences of abuse.

Data and Method

The data used for this article come from a project conducted by Jennifer Sherman from August 2010 to August 2011 in the Riverway community of Eastern Washington State, a small urban area in a mostly agricultural region. The larger research project focused on the experiences of the area’s low-income and poor populations in the aftermath of the Great Recession (Grusky, Western, & Wimer, 2011), seeking a diverse cross-section of adults impacted by the economic downturn. While the original project consists of 55 recorded, open-ended, in-depth interviews, the data used in this study are comprised of a subsample of 24 of the 33 women in the original sample. Mention of any form of victimization as children or adults was used as a basis from which to be subsampled. Although 13 men reported experiences of abuse during their interviews, none discussed being victims (or perpetrators) of abuse as adults. Instead, the majority of abuse mentioned by men was inflicted upon them by parents or other adult figures during childhood. While male childhood victimization and exposure to violence is important in understanding of the cycle of violence, not enough detail was given to fully analyze the influence it may have had on their adult lives, and they were thus dropped from the final analysis.³

Table 1 provides background information on the interview sample, subsample, and larger community. Compared with Riverway itself, the sample population included more women, African- and Native-Americans, and was less likely to be Latino or Asian. The sample was also significantly less likely to be married, but more likely to have children than the general population—demographic skews consistent with the sample’s focus on low-income and poor populations (Cherlin, 2010). The subsample, which was only women, looked similar to the full sample, but was even less likely to be married or cohabiting, and more likely to be single. Also consistent with the socioeconomic status of the sample, the full sample was much less likely to have a BA degree or higher than the larger population of Riverway. The subsample was even less likely to have a college degree; only one woman in the current study held a BA degree.

Table 1.

Sample Statistics.

	Subsamplen	Subsample%	Full Sample%	Riverway%^a
Mean age	24	45	44	33
Female	24	100	62	49.5
White	16	67	71	78.8
Latino as racial identity	2	8	5	NA
Native American^b	4	17	13	1.7
Black	1	4	7	2.2
Latino ethnicity	3	13	15	28.7
Married/remarried	5	20	31	76
Cohabiting	4	17	24	NA
Single (including divorced)	15	63	44	28^c
Have children	22	92	89	55
College Degree	1	4	6	24

Note. NA = not applicable.

U.S. Census Bureau (2012).

White and Native American mixed respondents were categorized as Native American.

Census figures for “female householder” plus “male householder.”

Interviews lasted an average of an hour and a half, and were all conducted in person in various locations, including the participants’ residences and public spaces such as private study rooms at public libraries, coffee shops, fast food restaurants, and a local food bank during nondistribution hours. Most of the participants were interviewed alone, although three couples and one pair of friends chose to be interviewed together. The interviews were conducted based on a guide that was organized around thematic areas, including history in the community; family history; work history; leisure; marriage, relationships, and family; religion and faith; political interests and voting behaviors; and demographics and background information. There was also completely unstructured time at the end of the interview for participants to discuss issues that were important to them. Interviews were semistructured but open enough for participants to take them in their own desired directions. At no time during the interview were participants asked specifically to discuss incidents of intimate violence. They often explicitly stated or indicated the presence of violence and abuse, after which follow-up questions were asked. These discussions arose entirely organically from their own personal history narratives in response to questions such as, “What was he [your father] like?” “What brought you back here [to Riverway]?” and “What was that marriage like?”

Participants were recruited into the study of economic stress through various methods, including fliers passed out at local social services such as food banks and job retraining centers, snowball sampling from the networks of participants and undergraduate research assistants, and through volunteer work with a local food bank. All participants signed consent forms that advised them of confidentiality procedures and protections, as well as their rights to refuse to answer questions, to change the topic of conversation, or to end the interview at any time. The researcher discussed the main points of these consent forms with participants prior to beginning interviews, to ensure full comprehension and allow them to ask detailed questions. In cases where interviews revealed unmet needs, they were also offered a comprehensive list of local counseling services, domestic violence services, and other family services. On rare occasions J.S. also provided information regarding specific services for addressing food insecurity issues, as well as aid with the college application process. Gift cards worth US$25 were offered as incentives to participants, and recruitment continued until saturation was reached, and interviews ceased to provide additional analytical themes or new perspectives.

Each interview was digitally recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed for emerging themes, using a modified grounded theory approach (Corbin & Strauss, 2007; LaRossa, 2005). Each interview transcript also included detailed field notes written within 24 hr of the interview. The field notes provided additional contextual information regarding the participant and observations from the interview. A first round of coding done by J.S. identified the existence of violence and/or abuse in the full sample. Those interviews that met the criteria were then subsampled for additional analysis by Marisa V. Cervantes. All of the coding for the current study’s analysis was done by M.V.C., without utilizing any of the codes used by J.S., and was subsequently corroborated by J.S. The qualitative data coding software, NVivo, was used in multiple rounds of analysis and coding. The first round of open coding was used to identify important concepts and themes such as abuse, relationships, and parenting. Subsequent rounds of coding were undertaken in which identified concepts were divided into more specific categories, such as childhood abuse and intimate partner violence. As coding advanced, the categories became more precise, such as separating the experiences of abuse into direct and indirect childhood abuse, identifying various components of power and control within abusive intimate relationships, and dividing the variations of responses to abuse, including stay/leave processes and the reasons stated for leaving an abusive relationship. The multiple rounds of analysis allowed for the identification of both anticipated and unanticipated themes. Overall, the repeated coding and in-depth examination of the patterns presented in the data provide a lens into the ways in which violence exists in a cyclical nature in the lives of the participants, as well as the discursive processes that the women utilized in navigating their interpersonal relationships over the course of their lives.

Results

Of the 24 women in the present sample, about 58% (n = 14) mentioned exposure to abuse as children during their interviews. Direct physical or sexual abuse was typically perpetrated by biological fathers and/or stepfathers, and occasionally by other adults (relatives or family friends). In addition, 38% (n = 9) of the women explicitly discussed having witnessed violence between their parents during their childhood and/or adolescence. For most of the women, violence was perpetrated by fathers onto mothers, but stepfathers and mothers’ boyfriends were also perpetrators of the abuse. The experience of growing up in an environment in which violence and abuse were common occurrences tended to be associated with women downplaying the effects of the abuse that they suffered, and arguably influenced how they came to understand relationships and their connections to abuse. The following themes illustrate the processes that women utilized to navigate the abuse in their lives. Although variety exists in the specific behaviors exhibited, the overall discursive processes of downplaying the abuse and its impacts were common throughout the sample.

The Need to Get Away

Given the amount of exposure to violence that the women discussed during their childhood, it was not surprising that they felt the need to escape their hostile home environments as young adults. Although only about 29% (n = 7) explicitly stated the action they took to get away from their abusers, most often fathers/stepfathers, the most common form of escape was through marrying at a young age.

Christine Gorman, a 52-year-old White woman, had a father who sexually abused her and her five siblings, boys and girls alike, and threatened to kill them if they told anyone. When asked about her marriage, she conveyed her path in this way:

I was sixteen-years-old and everybody ended up coming back down to the States—the United States—and [I] got married at seventeen. Up there [in Alaska]. To another abusive person. You know? I guess you follow what your father—or whatever they say, you know? . . . I stayed with him for three years. Ran away from him when he was at work.

For Christine, early childhood experiences of witnessing her mother repeatedly return to her abuser shaped her understandings of limited options for dealing with it: either staying and enduring more abuse, or running away from it altogether. In this sense, marrying at a young age was a way to escape her father’s abuse. When her husband became abusive, she followed the same script, and ran away from him as well, to protect herself from further abuse. In this way, her past experiences contributed to her enactment of (limited) agency for self-protection.

Maria Gomez, a 52-year-old Latina, experienced physical and sexual abuse during her childhood from various family members. Although Maria’s repeated victimization by non-father-figure family members was an exception among the sample, her narrative illustrated the multiple efforts to escape abuse, including marriage. She described being abused by an aunt whom she and her siblings lived with for 1 year:

Maria:

She took us in after our parents died and she was an abusive person. She was mean with us.

Did she hit you?

Maria:

Oh, she used to beat us with like those electric cords or hit us on the head with the rocks or sticks or whatever. She was a mean person.

After being taken away from that household by Child Protective Services, she and her siblings were sent to live with other family members, and continued to suffer from their abuse (physical and sexual) as well. Eventually, she moved in with her older sister, but the situation was not an improvement. As an adolescent, Maria found another way to escape; she ran away.

I was fourteen. I ran away from my sister’s house because I didn’t like being there, you know, because I was totally with her [since] I was ten. And my brother-in-law, he was always trying to molest me and all. When my sister got married with him, she had three kids and he molested her daughters, you know for years and years. And one time, I just got tired of it.

Having been subjected to abuse from a very young age, Maria did not have much power to protect herself from the abuse of her family members, but when she was 14 she took the initiative to escape the sexual advances of her brother-in-law and ran away to live with her older brother. However, that situation was not ideal either, and she soon wanted to get out of his house, too. Maria discussed how she had gone out with a man a couple of times and found out that he wanted to marry her. “I was scared. And then I said yes, but I wanted to get out of the house. And it was worse with my husband, it was.” As evidenced by Maria’s testimony, her early years were filled with a pattern of entering abusive households and finding ways to escape them—at first with the help of family members and Child Protective Services, followed by her own act of physically running away, and then through marriage. Unfortunately, each escape led her into yet another abusive situation.

There was often the expectation that young women would not leave their parent’s home until they were married. Thus, marriage proposals may have been their first opportunities to escape unbearable home lives. Ethel Moore, a 73-year-old White woman, described incidents of physical and emotional abuse throughout multiple phases of her life. As a young girl, she and her siblings were constantly abused at the hands of their father. She described her father as being “horrible,” someone who “beat the boys unmercifully” and at one point made her want to kill herself. She said, “Well I just didn’t see any way out. I had a father who I couldn’t imagine living my life [with] at home.” In an effort to escape her hostile home environment, Ethel married her first husband at the age of 16. However, he later turned into an abusive man who would throw things at her, hit her, and “just knock me cold.” As Ethel discussed her marriage, she reflected on her decision to marry young and acknowledged the negative impact that her choice had on her daughter:

Thinking back, I married at sixteen. I didn’t have to, but I need[ed] to get away from my father. And so, thinking back, I should have left very early. But I didn’t. I wasn’t smart enough to even realize what I was doing. I got married, and it wasn’t what you think it’s going to be, and it caused my daughter a lot of pain.

Ethel felt the best way to get away from her father was through marriage. However, as with Maria, her efforts at escaping one abusive situation led her into another abusive relationship, and one from which her daughter also suffered.

While the marriages that they entered generally did not start off as the abusive situations that they eventually became, the narratives of the Riverway women suggest that many were focused on marriage as an avenue through which to escape their childhood abusers, and were perhaps failing to see signs that might hint at future abusive tendencies. Nonetheless, the women enacted agency in the best way they could by using their romantic relationships to escape their fathers or other childhood abusers. However, this desire to escape their hostile home environments resulted in them trading one abuser for another. For women like Ethel Moore, marriage left them susceptible to further abuse in the long term. Others, like Christine Gorman, eventually found a way to escape their abusers again.

“Enough’s Enough”: Escape Narratives and Downplaying Abuse

Approximately 83% (n = 20) of the women revealed being involved in abusive relationships with male partners as adults. In a few cases, like Christine Gorman’s, women consciously worked to escape intimate partner violence. However, the majority did not identify abuse as the main reason to leave a violent or abusive romantic partner, but rather stated other problematic behavior as the trigger that gave them an excuse to leave. Still others, like Ethel Moore, stayed in their relationships because it was what they were taught to do. Maria Gomez, mentioned above, discussed two relationships with men who were abusive. In regard to her first husband, whom she married to escape her brother’s home, she said, “he was a drunk. He used to put a padlock on the outside of the door so I couldn’t get out . . . He was terrible. He was abusive. He would come home drunk and he beat me.” Despite the repeated abusive incidents, however, she stated her reason for finally leaving him was because he was being unfaithful to her.

One of the other men Maria dated also abused her, but in a way that enacted power and control in addition to physical violence: “He was a jealous man. And I mean he didn’t let me go out nowhere. He would buy groceries. He’d throw out the garbage. He would go to the laundry because he didn’t want nobody to see me.” Although he helped her financially and was good to her children, she said he was too abusive and she would not put up with his drug use after she found out about it. Reflecting on the pattern that she had with men, Maria said: “It’s weird that I get these guys, you know . . . the men that I’ve dated, they’ve always been like they want me to themselves.”

Maria’s narrative not only illustrates a failure to protect herself from abuse but also that the abuse itself was not always considered reason enough to leave the men she dated. As existing research (Murray et al., 2015) shows, a shift in a woman’s perspective regarding her partner or relationship is often a turning point in the process of leaving an abusive relationship. Rather than the fear of increased or intensified violence, Maria felt that the infidelity and/or drug use of her partners were more significant in shifting her perspective and making the decision to end the relationships. In essence, she downplayed the violence and tolerated a significant amount of abuse from her romantic partners until the other problematic behavior surfaced. Contrary to research which states that the possibility of a lowered socioeconomic status influences an abused woman’s decision to stay in a violent relationship (Barnett, 2000; Kim & Gray, 2008; LaViolette & Barnett, 2014), his financial contributions were not enough for Maria to tolerate the other behaviors that she deemed unacceptable in a relationship.

Similarly, Allison Foster, a 38-year-old Native American and White woman, witnessed her mother go through several relationships, many of which were with abusive men. At 16 years old, she ran away from home with a man she was dating. “I just kind of used him to get out of my house. You know? And then we got married when I was eighteen and then we were divorced by twenty-two.” Following her divorce, Allison had several short-term, abusive relationships. At one point, she and her son had to leave their apartment when her abusive boyfriend was sent to jail. As a result, they lived in a homeless shelter for about 2 months. When her boyfriend got out of jail, they lived together until the relationship ended. Allison described her reason for finally leaving him:

[I left] ‘cause he was doing drugs really bad and taking my money, and seeing somebody else when I was at work. My little boy told me, ‘My daddy has a girlfriend, she rode in your car.’ And, you know? So I was just like, you know what? Enough’s enough.

Much like Maria, for Allison it was not abuse, but rather infidelity and drug use that served as a turning point and provided enough incentive to leave the relationship. Although leaving him meant giving up the home they shared and her job, for her these behaviors crossed the line of acceptability, while abuse itself had not.

Estela Lopez, a Latina in her 60s, described how both she and her mother were victims of her father’s drunken rages. She was one of only three women (approximately 13%) in the sample who explicitly self-identified as a victim of domestic violence. Estela described a relationship she had with a man for about 5 years: “He beat me up really bad. Messed my head up. He used to hit me and I would land on the floor. Kicked me with his boots. I ended up in the hospital a couple of times with head concussions.” Like others, Estela also had a pattern of being with abusive men:

Have you had any more men in your life who weren’t good to you?

Estela:

Yeah, I did. That’s why I don’t have any. [laughter] Isn’t that the cycle? I tended to, I guess, fall for the ones that were abusive. I’ve been beaten in the head numerous times, not just two or three times. One doctor said that it was a miracle that I’m still alive.

Estela was one of the only women who stated the abuse itself as her reason for leaving a man, like much of the existing research finds is a key trigger for a woman to leave an abusive relationship (Baly, 2010; Belknap, 1999; Murray et al., 2015). Unlike other women in the current study, Estela made this decision after having experienced an extreme amount of repeated abuse by multiple partners and coming close to death because of it. Her past experiences not only influenced Estela’s decision to leave her partners, but she felt she could no longer date men at all, due to the likelihood of violence. Whether severely physical or filled with dominance and control, the abuse that women were subjected to typically was not a one-time occurrence. The numerous altercations that they endured took a toll on their mental health and senses of self, as well as their perspective regarding future relationships. The expectation of violence occurring within a relationship was a recurrent theme in the sample. Those who held the same beliefs also often chose to opt out of relationships entirely (for more on this issue, see Sherman, 2017).

Not all of the participants were able to pinpoint any reasons to leave their abusers, and particularly for the older women it sometimes took decades to end an abusive relationship, if at all. Stephanie Wilson was a 57-year-old White woman who had an abusive father. During her interview, Stephanie revealed being in a long-term abusive marriage, which included being raped and choked by her alcoholic husband more than once:

Stephanie:

That marriage lasted about twenty-seven years . . . it was a very rocky marriage . . . there was some abuse. I left him quite a few times, but I always went back.

And how come? Why did you always go back?

Stephanie:

I guess low self-esteem. I figured I couldn’t do it on my own. I missed him. I don’t know. I really don’t know why I kept—because there’s times that I got a really good job and was promoted from down there. I had a place to live and had everything going really good. And then I just—it lasted for a while. And then I had to go back. So I really haven’t examined that closely why I did that.

Years after it ended, Stephanie still did not understand why she kept going back to a man who abused her throughout their 27-year marriage. She did, however, recognize her low self-esteem, as well as the impact that it had on her children. Stephanie’s daughters had histories of being with abusive men and struggled with alcoholism, drug addiction, and low self-esteem themselves.

Beyond low self-esteem, Stephanie described an intense sense of dependency on others, including her children, her grandchildren, and her ex-husband, whom she continued to care for despite having divorced him. The high level of dependency that she described often left her feeling unable to follow through with plans to improve her situation or strive for greater happiness. For Stephanie, the inability to completely sever ties to her ex-husband bound her to her abusive past, and undermined her ability to form new romantic involvements.

The emotional connections that the women had with their partners often undermined their abilities to recognize or reject abuse. As Ethel Moore put it,

My other marriages were an extension of my father, which I hated. They say that girls do marry like their [fathers]. And when I went with them they were wonderful . . . When you live with someone just like my father, I hated him. And yet, there’s a love because he is your dad. And that’s the way it was with my marriages.

In her relationships with her father and husbands, Ethel struggled with the notion of loving someone she hated and hating someone she loved. Despite the abuse from her husbands, she expressed a sense of love for them because of the relationship they had; the abuse itself was not enough to abandon the emotional connection that existed between them. Added to the fact that her mother taught her, “Once you got married, you never left that person,” Ethel struggled to identify a romantic partner who was not also an abuser. For her, a long life taught her that love was undistinguishable from abuse, and that the commitment she made was most important.

The mental and emotional toll that intimate partner abuse takes on a person typically lasts longer than the physical injuries (LaViolette & Barnett, 2014). A diminished sense of self and loss of a sense of purpose can easily leave one emotionally dependent on an abuser. It can also blur the lines between the feelings of love and hate that a woman has for her abuser, as the narratives presented demonstrate. The stories related by these women illustrate that abuse became an expected component of relationships that women were willing to tolerate, despite being unhappy with it. For older women like Ethel and Stephanie, abuse became inextricably tied to their understandings of love and thus seemingly unavoidable. Being raised in a household where violence was prevalent, and one from which their own mothers did not flee, women also learned to tolerate abuse from the men they loved. For other women, like Maria and Allison, abusive relationships lasted until other less acceptable behaviors surfaced, such as infidelity or drug use. Although they were able to identify these problems as deal-breakers and those served as the turning points that shifted their perspectives of their relationships, abuse itself was rarely stated as the reason for leaving a romantic relationship. Given the examples of abusive partnerships that many grew up with, abuse was neither shocking nor unexpected as adults. Instead, the women often described their abusive relationships as ordinary, and attributed their breakdowns to other unacceptable behaviors. In their narratives, the abuse was often downplayed; rather than describing the abuse and/or control that they endured at the hands of their partners as the breaking points of their relationships, they drew upon other reasons to validate their dissatisfaction.

“I Wanted to Protect My Kids”: Children as Motivation for Interrupting the Cycle

About 92% (n = 22) of the women in the sample had children, meaning that their own well-being was not always the sole factor in deciding whether or not to leave their abusers. Although they often struggled to justify leaving because of their own victimization, 58% (n = 14) of the sample discussed their efforts and/or desires to leave their abusers as being motivated by a desire to protect children from violence, as well as to be better parents than their own. These women did discuss problems with abuse, but described children’s well-being, versus their own, as the primary motivator for interrupting the cycle of violence.

In some cases, it seemed as though an awareness of the potentially detrimental effects of domestic violence did not occur until children were present and/or being impacted. However, as demonstrated above, often women knew they were not in healthy relationships, but focused on issues besides abuse as justifications for leaving. In addition to partners’ problematic behaviors, women often expressed concerns regarding their children’s indirect exposure to abuse, such as children witnessing their abusive relationships and issues associated with domestic violence, including police intervening or having their children taken away.

Lindsay Wilson, one of Stephanie Wilson’s daughters, discussed witnessing her parent’s abusive relationship. Like other women with early childhood experiences of abuse, she later entered into her own abusive relationships as an adult. She eventually left her son’s abusive father, but described doing so to protect the children, not herself:

I don’t even want to speak to his dad because we just—we cannot get along . . . I don’t want him to know where I live, nothing like that . . . When we were together he would hit me and stuff like that. There was a lot of domestic violence, but I’m not scared. I’m not, like, scared of him, but I don’t want anything like that around the kids.

Lindsay’s narrative illustrates downplaying the effects of her abusive ex-boyfriend—seen in her insistence of not fearing him—which speaks to the normalization of violence in intimate relationships. Although her children had already been exposed to a considerable amount of violence, she eventually came to see their safety as her primary motivation for leaving him.

Protection of children was a common discursive strategy for explaining women’s desires both to escape abusive pasts, as existing research (Murray et al., 2015) shows, but also to avoid future relationships. Mikayla Calvert, a 37-year-old African American woman, discussed returning to Riverway with her daughter, who was born as a result of marital rape, to escape her abusive husband. She discussed her decision to avoid future relationships because of the potential threat of introducing more abuse into her daughter’s life:

I prefer to stay single because that’s how it works right now . . . Another reason is—my daughter is three. My husband has abused her. I would be a fool for me to bring some stranger to do the same thing to my daughter. To me that’d be crazy to introduce a possible predator. And I am not—I don’t have the best judgment. Apparently my picker is broken.

Mikayla’s experience in an abusive marriage was associated with her decision to opt out of dating in an effort to protect her daughter from further abuse. Her description of future partners as “possible predator[s]” illustrates the expectation that relationships inevitably become abusive. Unlike other women in the sample, Mikayla did not downplay the effects of the abuse she experienced, but rather it heightened her sense of protectiveness for her child and contributed to her aversion to dating. Her daughter’s safety took precedence over the possibility of a partner who could contribute to her life emotionally, socially, and financially. For Mikayla and 11 others (50%) who chose to opt out of dating, only one type of man and one type of relationship existed—one filled with violence and abuse. Thus, avoiding abuse meant avoiding a relationship altogether.

As with other motivating factors, desires to protect children did not always result in women successfully leaving their abusers. When asked how she felt about her decision to stay with her abusive husband, Ethel Moore said, “Well, I took it on myself. I blamed myself because I wasn’t smart enough to know better, you know. So I took on the blame. But the biggest thing was, I wanted to protect my kids.” Like her own mother, Ethel felt she was unable to leave her abusive husband because she had nowhere to go and could not support her family on her own. Nonetheless, she still strongly desired to protect her children from abuse, and to succeed where her own mother had failed in this endeavor. She used the police to threaten her husband, which sufficed in shifting the abuse to herself instead of to her children (something that her mother did not do for Ethel and her siblings), but she did not seek protection from the police or other support services for herself. For women like Ethel, who were unwilling or unable to give up on relationships, protecting their children often manifested in different ways, such as making themselves the sole recipient of the direct abuse. When staying in the relationship was the only option, so too was enduring the abuse.

As this section has demonstrated, oftentimes women depicted their children as motivators for them to take action in interrupting the cycles of abuse. They described not wanting their children to have the same experiences they had as kids, and frequently used this desire for protection as the reason to leave their abusers. The narratives suggest that the consequences of the abuse were heightened when the women saw the situation through the lens of their children, which was a trigger that helped justify the decision to leave. Realizing that their partner had harmed, or could harm, their children was described as a greater motive for leaving than their own health and safety. Although not all of the children were directly abused, most had already been exposed to violence. As previous studies (e.g., Cherlin et al., 2004; Edelson, 1999) and 38% of the women in the present sample discussed, witnessing parent’s abusive relationships negatively impacts children and their understandings of intimate relationships. Witnessing their mothers’ abusive relationships was likely to contribute to continuing the cycle of violence.

However, the recognition that they were living in hostile environments and subjecting their children to unhealthy relationships often provided women with the reason, or source of strength, that they needed to interrupt the cycles of abuse. Whether this meant leaving their abuser, avoiding relationships altogether, or shifting the direct abuse onto themselves and away from their children when they could not leave, the efforts to protect their children from subsequent abuse was a key way in which they enacted agency within the abusive relationships. Their efforts of protecting their children in ways that their own mothers had failed to protect them was also described as evidence of being a good parent and better than their own.

Discussion

As these narratives have shown, abusive relationships can be complex and oftentimes difficult to escape. Previous research finds that exposure to violence in childhood leads to a higher probability that individuals will become perpetrators of violence and abuse toward others in later life, namely their intimate partners. However, the patterns that emerged in the narratives of the Riverway women revealed a cycle of victimization rather than perpetration. Early childhood exposure to violence marked the onset of a cycle of violence for most of the women. Hostile home environments often led them to find escape routes, most commonly through marriage. Marrying young to get away from one’s father (or other abusive adult figure) tended to result in the women entering their first abusive romantic relationships. The early childhood families and homes, which were often filled with violence, socialized women to treat abuse as a normal and expected component of adult intimate unions.

For all but one of the women, the first violent relationship was not their last; rather, it oftentimes began a sequence of intimate partner abuse. They often downplayed this abuse in their narratives, and rarely stated it as a sufficient reason to leave their partners. Instead, other forms of unacceptable behavior, such as partners’ drug use or infidelity, were discussed as triggers that helped to justify the termination of relationships. This is distinct from their reasons for leaving their hostile home environments, which generally did focus on abuse. It is important to note that women commonly used violence as a motive to get away from their fathers, but not from their romantic partners.

Women with children also had an additional motive for negotiating their positions in abusive relationships. While these women discussed escaping their abusive partners for the sake of protecting their children, those who stayed often tried to shift the violence away from their children and onto themselves. Despite the efforts made by these mothers, children were ultimately exposed to violent home environments. It remains to be seen whether their children’s exposure to parental abuse will lead them down the same path into abusive relationships as adults; nonetheless the patterns elucidate how these cycles of victimization begin and can be reproduced within families.

Overall, the narratives presented in this article highlight the normalization of violence and the processes of leaving abusive relationships. Although most research on survivors of intimate partner violence who have left their abusers has found that the fear of increased or intensified violence that poses a threat to a woman’s life is a main trigger to leave, this was not expressed among the women in this study. Even for Estela Lopez, who was the exception in stating violence as a reason for leaving, the threat on one’s life was not stated as a common occurrence. Rather, women identified other turning points as giving them the motivation to leave, including an unwillingness to tolerate other behavior, which created a shift in perspective of the relationship, and the realization of the impacts of abuse on their children.

Although these triggers are consistent with existing research (Baly, 2010; Murray et al., 2015), what is distinct is the extent to which the women downplayed the abuse that they did experience. It may be the case that because they did not feel their lives were at stake, the abuse was not considered severe enough to be something that they could not handle. Their narratives suggest that the experience of a lifetime of abuse normalizes the violence to seem expected and manageable. While the question of whether a woman must “believe her life to be at stake in order for her to make choices that protect self and to feel that such a choice is morally correct” (Belknap, 1999, p. 402) remains to be answered, the findings from this study show that fearing for one’s life is not the only factor that drives a woman to protect herself.

Furthermore, because this sample was not recruited from domestic violence support centers, it may be that the discursive processes of downplaying the abuse were used because the women had not acquired the language to discuss their abuse, nor taken on victimhood as an identity. As Baly (2010) notes, studies that sample on survivors from shelters and other support centers may be distinct through the ways in which women discuss their abuse. Their narratives say a lot about how much they have processed it, mentally and emotionally. Even if they also rely on turning points as the triggers to take action to leave their abusers, those women also recognize the severity and damage that the abuse had on them and others close to them (i.e., children), and they are able to discuss it in this way (Baly, 2010). Talking about the abuse they endured in counseling groups and with professionals allows them to frame their experiences differently in hindsight compared with victims who have not received counseling. Thus, receiving support through counseling services can foster a level of understanding of their past in a way that enables them to identify when the abuse escalated. The women in this sample, however, repeatedly downplayed the abuse, even after they had left the relationships.

As such, this study illustrates the need to broaden sampling strategies to extend knowledge of the experience of victims of long-term intimate partner and domestic violence. Sampling from populations of victims seeking support services leads to a lack of understanding of victims who do not seek support services, especially those with a long history of victimization. It may be that the normalization of abuse creates an expectation that victims are able to manage abuse from their partners, and thus they only seek help when forced to or when they feel their lives are at stake. Although this study does not compare this sample to those who are currently receiving counseling or support from other services, it speaks to the normalization of the abuse and illustrates that when the threat of violence is not considered as severe, victims rely on other reasons to leave their partners. Ultimately this study is limited in its ability to conclude whether perceptions or experiences would be different had they been currently seeking or received long-term services specifically for domestic violence. Better understanding the ways in which women currently involved in such services differ from those who are not may be another fruitful area of research that future studies can pursue. Broadening sampling strategies is also necessary to provide information for those working within the criminal justice system and victim advocacy networks to help improve understandings of the complexity of domestic violence. Those who are in the field and encounter victims of abuse, whether directly or indirectly, are in a position to effect change and provide the assistance needed by some of the most vulnerable and marginalized people.

Although the findings from these data are consistent with the IGT of violence theory and studies on the process of leaving an abusive relationship, this is only one possible interpretation. Although the small sample size may limit generalizability, the consistent emergence of distinct discursive patterns regarding downplaying and normalizing violence within romantic relationships points to the need for further investigation on the topic. Thus, these findings suggest the need for longitudinal studies that can track the impact of indirect exposure to violence, to examine whether the children of abused women do in fact continue the cycle of victimization into their adult lives. While a continuation of the current study is not feasible, future research should attempt to follow more than one generation of families with histories of violence, to delve deeper into the underlying mechanisms within the cycle of violence. Speaking to children can elucidate some of the ways in which they have come to understand interpersonal violence. Better comprehension of their experiences and perspectives can help inform interventions to help educate child victims about the warning signs of abuse to empower them to recognize and reject such behaviors as unhealthy, rather than treating them as normal parts of intimate relationships. In this way, we may also begin to see changes in the processes of leaving and the triggers that victims of domestic violence utilize to leave their abusers.

As a whole, the narratives in this study have provided insight as to how women in cycles of victimization navigate their intimate relationships, rather than solely why abuse occurs. The normalization of violent behaviors is a coping mechanism that girls learn early in life, often from their mothers and female role models, which can set the tone for their future relationships. The discourses that women utilized to escape abuse in this study demonstrate that these early coping strategies can limit adult women’s abilities to recognize violence and to justify escaping it within their own relationships. With more research, it is possible that public perception of intimate partner violence can shift from the existing victim-blaming rhetoric toward one that recognizes the social and structural constraints that complicate the enactment of women’s agency.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Joanne Baker for her invaluable help and support before, during, and after the data collection process, and Alma Jo Hargrove and Brad Pitkin for their work on this project. Thanks also to Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson, Katrina Leupp, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research presented in this article was made possible by a New Faculty Seed Grant from Washington State University, Office of Research, OGRD#114657. The authors are extremely grateful for this support.

ORCID iD

Marisa V. Cervantes

Notes

Author Biographies

Marisa V. Cervantes is a first-generation PhD candidate at Washington State University. Her research interests revolve around family; racial/ethnic, class, and gender inequality; Latinx identity in higher education; intimate partner violence; and violence toward women of color. She is also actively involved in research and service related to the experiences of underrepresented minorities in higher education.

Jennifer Sherman is an associate professor of sociology at Washington State University. Her research looks at the ways in which job loss, poverty, and inequality affect individuals and families, particularly in rural U.S. communities. She is the author of the 2009 book, Those Who Work, Those Who Don’t, and co-editor of the 2017 volume, Rural Poverty in the United States. She has authored numerous articles on topics including rural poverty survival, rural education, surveillance and control of low-income parents, the impacts of the Great Recession on low-income families, relationship struggles among the poor, and the growth of inequality in high-amenity rural communities.

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