Relationship Power,Control,and Dating Violence Among Latina Girls

Abstract

We drew on the theory of gender and power and grounded theory methodology to explore how 18 Latina girls conceptualized power and control within their heterosexual dating relationships. Our findings indicate that boys/men used a number of strategies to control girls, including: regulating appearances and behaviors; cheating and threatening to cheat; and physical and sexual violence. Girls used a variety of strategies to resist these attempts to control them, including: lying, flirting, and cheating; reactive violence; breaking up; and maintaining emotional distance. Girls attempted to subvert boys’ attempts to control them; however, these attempts were not always successful given the constraints of gender that adolescent females must negotiate.

Keywords

adolescent relationships dating violence Latinas relationship power

Approximately 9% to 10% of adolescents report dating violence victimization in national surveys (Grunbaum et al., 2002). Higher estimates (8%-57%) are found in single studies (Hickman, Jaycox, & Aronoff, 2004). The impact of dating violence is gendered. While both boys and girls initiate and engage in physical and emotional forms of dating violence (Hickman et al., 2004), girls are more likely to be seriously hurt and are at increased risk for substance use and STI/HIV risk behaviors (Foshee, 1996).

Girls negotiating adolescence experience pressure to be “popular,” which often translates into attracting male approval. They are encouraged to construct themselves as the objects of male desire, to work their way to the top of the “pretty power hierarchy,” and to secure a boyfriend (Artz, Blais, & Nicholson, 2000; Brumberg, 1997). Girls go to great lengths to maintain intimate relationships with boys even if this means silencing their own voices and becoming involved in unhealthy relationships (Guthrie & Flinchbaugh, 2001). Boys, on the other hand, are typically socialized to be emotionally distant and view girls as sexual objects (Miller & White, 2003).

Consistent with gender and power theory (GPT), girls possess less “relationship power” than boys/men (Wingood & DiClemente, 2000), meaning boys typically engage in behaviors against girls’ wishes, have more decision-making control, and have greater control over girls’ behavior (Pulerwitz, Gortmaker, & DeJong, 2000). High schools, with their emphasis on male sports achievement, elaborate heterosexual popularity rituals (e.g., prom), and a tolerance for girls’ sexual harassment, certainly prepare girls for a world where men set the rules for relationships (Kelly, 1993; Orenstein, 1994).

Although gender plays a prominent role in shaping adolescent relationship dynamics, race/ethnicity, class, and culture also need to be considered (Sokoloff & Dupont, 2005). For Latinas, machismo and Marianismo represent traditional gender role ideologies that might influence dating dynamics. Machismo dictates that Latino boys and men should be tough, sexually assertive, and dominating, whereas Marianismo stresses that girls and women should be submissive and passive in their relationships with boys and men (Marin, 2003).

Age also matters. Girls involved with older men experience more inequality since they possess even less relationship power as a result of their young age and men’s gender privilege (Miller, Clark, & Moore, 1997). While girls are constrained by a number of sociocultural factors, they can and do resist males’ attempts to control and/or victimize them (Lopez, Jurik, & Gilliard-Matthews, 2009); they also resent aspects of their assigned “submissive” roles (Taylor, 1996).

Utilizing a transdisciplinary approach, we examine how Latina girls interpret power and control within their relationships with a focus on how these processes relate to dating violence. While all girls had a history of drug use, they did not report that their substance abuse affected their relationships with partners. They did, however, think their partners’ drug use influenced relationship dynamics often in ways related to dating violence.

Method

Participants

Participants included 18 Latina girls between the ages of 14 and 18 who were living in a residential treatment home in a large Southwestern city. The average age for the girls was 15.33 (SD = 1.24). Fifteen of the girls were currently involved with older boyfriends.

Inclusion/exclusion criteria and recruitment procedures

Girls’ reported ethnicity, sexual, and drug use history were used to screen and classify girls. English-speaking Latina girls who had a documented history of drug use (used drugs other than nicotine or alcohol at least twice in the past 30 days) and who reported being sexually active (had vaginal intercourse at least once in the past 6 months) were eligible to participate.

Clinical intake staff members at the residential treatment facility were responsible for recruiting girls for this study and obtaining informed consent. Participants received a $25 gift card.

Community partnership

This study was part of a larger pilot project designed to assist in the development of an HIV and substance use prevention program for drug-involved Latina adolescents. The researchers worked closely with community stakeholders to develop the interview questionnaire and recruitment protocol.

Semistructured interviews

Semistructured interviews lasting 1.5 to 2 hours were conducted in a private room. While the interviews explored a number of issues, this article focuses on girls’ responses to questions about their heterosexual relationships with boys/men.

Analyses

Guided by grounded theory methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), inductive analysis and the constant comparative method were used to code the transcripts. After initial categories and subcategories were established, the data were organized by making connections among categories involving both boys’ control strategies and girls’ counterstrategies. This research reports on these strategies and counterstrategies.

Results

Boys’ Control Strategies

Virtually all (15 of the 18) girls reported that their boyfriends used a number of strategies to control them because they were jealous or possessive. These included regulating girls’ appearance, behaviors, and relationships with others; cheating or threatening to cheat; and violence and intimidation.

Regulating girls’ appearance, behaviors, and relationships

Two girls indicated that boyfriends attempted to control their physical appearance. Fourteen-year-old Nina described how her 15-year-old boyfriend attempted to control how she dressed: “He really didn’t like me wearing skirts, or low-cut shirts, ’cause he didn’t want people to see me . . . he didn’t want guys to see that.” Eight girls also noted how their boyfriends would control and monitor their behaviors. Angelina, who was 15 and dating a 23-year-old, discussed how she had to obtain permission from her boyfriend: “When I want something, I go to him, and I ask permission, like, I don’t know . . . it’s really weird. He got me trained, it sounds really weird, but he got me trained.” Lydia, a 14-year-old who was dating a 19-year-old man, also described a partner who “was really controlling”:

I had to go to sleep on the phone with him. I would just sit there and I have nothing to talk about . . . it’s like 1 o’clock in the morning. . . . “Can I go to sleep?” and he would just start snoring, but I can’t hang up, of course, because he’ll be like, “Oh why you hang up?” . . . He’ll call right back. One time I tried it and I hung up and [he] called right back and he’s like, “Who’s there? Oh, let me talk to your mom.” At 1 o’clock in the morning! Get for real! Trippin’ . . . talk to my mom!

These accounts suggest that girls’ partners regulated their attire and mobility in an attempt to limit their independence and minimize the possibility that their girlfriends would be noticed by or able to see other men.

Cheating and threatening to cheat

Five girls shared stories about how their boyfriends used infidelity to gain control in the relationship. Angelina, whose boyfriend regularly cheated on her, rationalized this by saying she was his “girlfriend” and the one he “thought about” when he was with other girls. Sixteen-year-old Ashley caught her boyfriend cheating when she entered his room unannounced:

He was watching a movie with some girl in the bed. And I’m like, “Oh, my God” . . . I was so shocked, I couldn’t say nothing. I just stood there still. . . . He was like, “I’m sorry.” I was like, “Was this the first time?” He was all, “Yeah.” But, I was like, “Okay whatever . . . I don’t want to talk to you.”

Ashley broke up with him that night, but they got back together a few days later. She noted that his behavior had shifted: “Oh, I can have her, I can cheat on her, and she will forgive me.” She believed he would cheat on her again and that he was the one “now in control” of the relationship.

Physical and sexual violence

Four participants detailed experiences of physical and/or sexual violence in their relationships. Boyfriends used violence to deal with girlfriends who were “misbehaving.” Fifteen-year-old Jessica, for example, stated that her 17-year-old boyfriend would beat her for “acting up.” Nevertheless, she was quick to attribute her boyfriend’s violence to drug/alcohol use:

He would get mad when he was on drugs, and then he would get mad when he was off drugs. But he would mainly be mad because he didn’t have drugs. . . . He started getting really impatient with me. And, I don’t know, he would sometimes set me straight. Slap me up.

Like Jessica, Lydia attributed her boyfriend’s violent behavior to drug/alcohol use.

He was crazy. He would totally go off! I think it’s ’cause he drinks a lot of alcohol. One time he went to my house and punched holes in the wall and broke my window ’cause my mom [told him], “She’s not here,” and I really wasn’t there.

Lydia also noted that her boyfriend’s violence was rooted in jealousy and possessiveness:

He said I was messing with his brother, which I wasn’t, and he punched me in the head . . . and I had a big old bump, then he choked me, and pushed up against the wall. I was like, “Oh, my God.”

Simone, age 15 with an 18-year-old partner, also believed that her boyfriend’s violent attack was provoked by jealousy:

He would just get mad sometimes . . . he was like jealous, and he would slap me on my face. Once he punched me in my belly and it made my belly ring rip off. I didn’t know what to do. I just stayed with him ’cause I was dumb.

Throughout the interview, Simone shared many instances of abuse. She believed that her boyfriend was not interested in her as a person, but rather as an object. In this instance, Simone described how her boyfriend had sex with her against her will:

He wasn’t going to stop. He wasn’t hurting me; he was just holding me down. I was like, “Wow” and afterwards I was mad, and I just left because I wanted him to stop and he wouldn’t. . . . [When I left] he didn’t say anything, he just said I was a “bitch” and I just left, and then he called me like an hour later, and I didn’t wanna talk to him then.

When asked if she thought her boyfriend cared about her, Simone stated, “No, I don’t think he cared. He never cared. He just tried to get things outta me. . . . Probably just doing it for the sex.”

As these narratives illustrate, boys used violence as a means to control their girlfriends. Some girls, like Lydia, believed that their boyfriends cared about them and attributed their violence to drugs and alcohol and/or jealousy. Other girls, like Simone, believed that their boyfriends cared very little for them and used violence as a means to control them. Girls’ perceptions may influence how they choose to respond to boyfriends’ behaviors. For example, while Lydia chose to stay in the relationship, Simone eventually opted to leave her boyfriend.

Girls’ Counter Strategies

Girls used a number of indirect and direct strategies to either counter their boyfriends’ attempts to control them or to maintain control within their relationships. These strategies included lying, flirting, cheating; reactive aggression and violence; openly defying/breaking up; and maintaining emotional distance.

Lying, flirting, and cheating

Seven girls described instances in which they lied to their boyfriends about participating in “forbidden” behaviors, flirted with other boys, or cheated on their boyfriends. Lydia, for example, described her boyfriend as being “very controlling.” He had “punched” and “hit” her in the past. Lydia eventually began to flirt with other boys at school.

He would hear that I was flirting with guys a lot at school ’cause once he got kicked out I was still going to school. He didn’t [like it] ’cause I was and I never confessed that I was, but I was and he heard it ’cause he used to go to that school [and] he knew a lot of people.

She then went on to explain, “I’ve cheated on him, too, plenty of times, and I don’t really care.” She responded to her boyfriend’s past infidelities, jealousy, and controlling behaviors by actively seeking out the attention of other boys at school and through “cheating.”

Angelina described her relationship as “great” and talked about how much her boyfriend loved her. Nevertheless, she acknowledged that he had “cheated with other girls” on several occasions. Angelina then described an instance in which she, in turn, cheated on her boyfriend:

I cheated on him and he took me back . . . he came crawling back to me. I would hate to say it that way ’cause it makes it sound like he’s so desperate, but he came back to me and asked me to be with him again.

In these instances, girls reacted to their boyfriends’ controlling behaviors by flirting with other boys, and in rare instances, cheating on them. Of the seven girls who reported engaging in these counterstrategies, three reported positive consequences (e.g., boyfriend appreciated them more; vowed to stop cheating); one reported a negative outcome (boyfriend retaliated by further trying to control the girl); and two reported no consequences (boyfriends never found out about girlfriends’ counterstrategies).

Reactive violence

Six girls used aggressive or violent behavior as a means to respond to boys’ attempts to control or diminish them. Melissa, age 14, described how her 16-year-old boyfriend habitually “looked at other girls” and how these episodes usually ended up in verbal and/or physical altercations:

We’ll start fighting and stuff, and like, we’ll stop and then be happy again, and then we go somewhere, he is looking at this girl, and I tell him, okay? And he is like, oh so this and that, and we go back to where we are supposed to be, and then he’ll be after me [again], and then talking stuff, so then I just get mad, and yell back at him, and then he hits me, then I hit him back.

Jessica also described how she responded to her boyfriend’s abuse by defending herself:

After a while he started losing a lot of patience with me, and then I started defending myself when he would talk stuff to me, so after I defended myself, he would get mad and he would throw stuff at me.

As illustrated by these accounts, girls sometimes used reactive violence as a means for “defending” themselves against boyfriends’ attempts to control them. Note that girls were not always responding to boys’ physical attempts to control them. That is, girls sometimes used physical violence as a way to respond to boys’ attempts to control or diminish them through cheating, flirting with other girls, verbal ridicule, and physical intimidation (e.g., “getting in my face”). This was a dangerous strategy because violence tended to escalate when girls tried to physically defend themselves.

Openly defying/breaking up with boyfriend

Three girls openly defied their boyfriends’ attempts to control them. They either refused to do what their boyfriends wanted them to do or they eventually broke up with them. Lydia, for example, described how she eventually became “fed up” with her boyfriend:

I don’t like that he thinks he can just control me, tell me what to wear and stuff. If I started doing it anyway, I would do it on purpose and I would wear like super short shorts and stuff, and it was funny because he never did anything. After a while, I was like, “I’m about to do it ’cause I’m me. What do you want me to do? You tripping.” He was really trying to tell me what to wear and it wasn’t okay.

Simone, who had also described many instances of abuse and control, indicated that she eventually broke up with her boyfriend. The turning point was when her boyfriend impregnated another girl:

I broke up with him before ’cause someone told me he was doing things with them, like with her, and I didn’t wanna believe it, but then I asked him, and he said no, and I kinda believed him for like two days until they told me again, and I was like, “I can’t deal with it,” so I just broke up with him.

These narratives suggest that some girls did attempt to overtly defy controlling boyfriends, and in a couple of instances, they eventually broke up with them.

Maintaining emotional distance

Three girls noted that bad experiences in past relationships made them want to keep their current boyfriends “at a distance” and not get “too attached” to them. Gina, a 14-year-old girl with a 21-year-old partner, had this to say about her current boyfriend:

I’m not trying to get stuck on this guy, but I think this guy is really stuck on me. He follows me. He always wants to be with me, like if I eat, he has to be there. . . . I mean . . . if I need something, he does it. . . . Not me, I don’t wanna get attached.

Gina acknowledged that she was trying to “protect” herself by not becoming “too attached” to her current boyfriend. Like other girls, Gina shared that her past boyfriend had been unfaithful and didn’t treat her well. Describing this past relationship as “bad,” Gina stated,

I don’t wanna get my feelings hurt. I don’t want to find out . . . like if he did something, I don’t wanna know. ’Cause I have been with a guy before for three years. . . . And I got hurt. I don’t want that to happen again.

As this example illustrates, some girls learned to avoid what they perceived as “past mistakes” and sought to stay emotionally less invested in future relationships.

Summary

The current study examined how Latina adolescents experienced their relationships with boys and men. Consistent with previous literature, we found that boys/men used a number of strategies to control their girlfriends, including dictating their attire, monitoring their locations, and physically and sexually abusing them. In response, girls used a number of strategies to counteract boyfriends’ attempts to control them. Some of these strategies ultimately lodged girls further into the gender order (like flirting, wearing suggestive attire, and “cheating;” Thorne, 1993), while others challenged male power (like being less emotionally attached and breaking up with abusive boyfriends). Other counterstrategies were more overt and included verbal and physical aggression. Although these latter strategies demonstrated girls’ resilience, they also placed them at risk for potential arrest since some of these can and have been construed as “assault” (Buzawa & Hotaling, 2006).

While we acknowledge that our sample is small, we believe our results provide meaningful insight into how “at-risk” Latina girls negotiate power and control within their relationships. Our most striking finding was that the majority of the girls did not manifest behaviors or attitudes consistent with the traditional gender role expectations, and instead showed considerable anger and resentment over relationship inequality and even acted to challenge it on occasion.

Girls’ lack of discussion about how their own drug use influenced their relationships is also notable. Instead, the few girls who did discuss drug/alcohol use tended to focus on their partners’ use as it related to their controlling and abusive behaviors. Future research is needed to further explore how Latina girls’ view their own drug use as it relates to relationships with boys/men. Such research should explore how drug use and girls’ participation in male-dominated drug markets relates to victimization.

A Focus on Transdisciplinary Research

This study is an attempt to conduct transdisciplinary research in a community-based setting. We identified a real-world problem, focused on change, and incorporated the input of community stakeholders at all stages of the research process (Wickson, Carew, & Russell, 2006). Transcending disciplinary boundaries, we used psychology, feminist criminology, gender studies, and prevention research to explore how at-risk Latina adolescent girls made sense of their relationships with boys/men. Our theoretical framework was rooted in the developmental psychological literature on gender socialization, but was expanded to include a gender studies perspective on girls’ responses—one that emphasized ethnicity, culture, and age. This unique lens revealed how Latinas strategically and resourcefully respond to boys’ attempts to control them. Interventions designed to promote healthy relationships among Latina adolescents should be context-specific and account for the varied and complex ways in which both boys and girls negotiate power and control.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the following students for their assistance with data collection: Mayra Diaz, Aubrey Smith, and Tiffany Williams. They also wholeheartedly thank the intake staff at the residential treatment center for assisting with the project and, most importantly, they want to extend their gratitude to the 18 young women who participated in this study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

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

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by an ASU Subcontract to Vera Lopez from Columbia University, National Institute of Mental Health, R25 MH080665

Bios

Vera Lopez, PhD, is an associate professor in justice and social inquiry at Arizona State University, and received her PhD in educational psychology, an MA in program evaluation, and a BA in psychology, all from the University of Texas at Austin. She completed a clinical internship at the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a 2-year NIMH-funded postdoctoral research fellowship at ASU’s Prevention Research Center. Her interests include delinquency, substance use, sexual risk taking, and prevention research. She has published in Family Relations, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Feminist Criminology, and Journal of Early Adolescence.

Meda Chesney-Lind, PhD, is professor of women’s studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is nationally recognized for her work on women and crime. Her books include Girls, Delinquency and Juvenile Justice; The Female Offender: Girls, Women and Crime; Female Gangs in America; Invisible Punishment; Girls, Women and Crime; and Beyond Bad Girls: Gender Violence and Hype. She recently finished an edited collection on trends in girls’ violence, entitled Fighting for Girls: Critical Perspectives on Gender and Violence that was just published by SUNY Press.

Julia Foley, MS, received both her BS and MS in justice studies at ASU. Her research focuses on youth sociology, youth criminology, and media studies.

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