"I Hugged My Baby and Started to Plan": Young Mothers Strategizing Against Intimate Partner Violence

Background & Purpose: Research shows that children are impacted by witnessing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), and there has been some research on how adult mothers try to protect their children from the impacts. There is less information on the strategies teenaged mothers they use to protect their children. This paper addresses this gap by asking young mothers how they protected their children, what advice they would give other young mothers in that situation and systemic changes needed to increase safety.

Methods: Ten young parents were interviewed twice each, over a period of 6 months. An initial round of in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with young parents that had been involved with Child Protections Services (CPS) as children, as parents or both about the challenges they faced and their ideas for systemic change. A second round was conducted with the same parents to check themes that from the first interviews and focus on their experiences of IPV, how they had protected their children and solutions to systemic barriers.        

Nine mothers and one father were recruited through snowball sampling. The parents’ age at birth of their first child ranged from 15-19. Six parents identified as Black, one identified as “Native and African”, two as white and one as “Aboriginal: Cree and Ojibway”. Of the ten parents I interviewed half were receiving social assistance, three others were pursuing postsecondary education and receiving student loans, and two were working. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and then coded thematically using narrative and intersectional feminist approaches to qualitative analysis.

Findings: The analysis found that young parents that had experienced IPV were aware of the potential negative impacts on their children and worked hard to mitigate the impacts. Strategies included trying to hide the violence from children, providing physical and emotional comfort after the abuse, and leaving the abusive relationship. The parents shared the importance of having supports that listened and were supportive as the stigma of being a young parent was multiplied if the relationship became abusive. With respect to systemic changes they felt conflicted as they wanted to access supports but knew that if they told social service providers that CPS would be called and felt this would put them at risk of losing their children. They also emphasized the need for safe, affordable housing, a livable income and wraparound supports for themselves and their children before and after leaving abusive relationships.

 Conclusions and Implications: Young parents worked hard to protect their children from the impacts of witnessing IPV. Social workers must support and build on these strategies to strengthen the wellbeing of the family. It is important to consider how mandatory reporting based on witnessing IPV may make poor, racialized, young mothers, who are overrepresented in CPS less likely to access supports, leaving them more isolated and at higher risk of continued abuse. Social workers should work to decrease stigma for young parents and advocate for safe, affordable housing, a livable income and meaningful supports for young mothers and their children.