“Going Forward Like a Grandmother in the Snow”: Personal Survival Strategies, Motherhood, and Nature as Resources for Mothers Who Have Experienced Intimate Partner Violence

Minna Sorsa (), Hulda S. Bryngeirsdottir and Eija Paavilainen ()
Additional contact information
Minna Sorsa: Child Psychiatry, Tampere University Hospital, Wellbeing Area of Pirkanmaa, 33520 Tampere, Finland
Hulda S. Bryngeirsdottir: School of Health, Business and Natural Sciences, University of Akureyri, Solborg v/Nordurslod, 600 Akureyri, Iceland
Eija Paavilainen: Health Sciences Unit, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, 33014 Tampere, Finland

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 7, 1-18

Abstract: After suffering interpersonal violence (IPV), women survivors can access various interdisciplinary services and programmes to guide their recovery. Nevertheless, many vulnerable women postpone seeking help, sometimes indefinitely. Motherhood especially complicates help-seeking because mothers often want to protect both the perpetrator and their children. Understanding women’s resilience, resources, and capacities in surviving IPV, however, could guide the development of helpful services that women actually access. Thus, in our study, we sought to explore the agency, resources, and reinforcing survival experiences of survivors of IPV. Our data, gathered in Finland during the COVID-19 pandemic, consisted of 12 narratives of mothers told in Clinical Ethnographic Narrative Interviews that were subsequently subjected to thematic analysis. Five themes describing personal resources, motherhood, and nature were identified under the overarching metaphor of “going forward like a grandmother in the snow”. Recognising the agency, resources, capacities, and coping mechanisms of women who have suffered IPV can help in developing professional outreach programmes, promoting women’s early access to useful resources, and, in turn, helping them to stop the possible intergenerational transmission of violence.

Keywords: gender-based violence (GBV); intimate partner violence (IPV); help-seeking; nature; maternal health; qualitative research; survival strategies; women’s health; trauma; trauma recovery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/7/5389/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/7/5389/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:7:p:5389-:d:1115588

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().