Type:	Journal Article
Title:	Resilience among urban adolescent mothers living with violence: listening to their stories
Other Titles:	Violence against women
Authors:	Kennedy, Angie C
Keywords:	Cross-cultural;Screening;Welfare;Pregnancy;Risk factors
Year:	2005
Publisher:	Sage Publications
Citation:	11 (12), December 2005
Notes:	This article presents the qualitative study from the US that used a risk and resilience approach within a multicultural feminist perspective, to explore 10 urban adolescent mothers’ experiences with multiple forms of violence, the relationships between violence and school, and their resilience in the context of welfare reforms in the US. Multicultural feminist approaches analyse the intersecting issues of gender, race or ethnicity, class and sexual orientation rather than privileging gender, in order that feminist theorising and research capture the diversity of all women’s experiences. The risk and resilience approach focuses on both the accumulation of risks (at the level of the individual, family, community or culture) as the key to understanding poor outcomes among people’s lives and people’s strengths in coping with struggles. Experiencing violence across multiple contexts, together with ongoing risk factors such as poverty and minority status, places adolescent women at high risk for developing problems. Some young women who have had their first child during adolescence were resilient, showing 5 features as contributing to resilience: the protective factors that contributed to positive outcomes included external sources of support, a strong goal orientation, personal ambition and assertiveness, and at grade level during elementary school. Researchers are beginning to examine the extent of cumulative violence exposure (simultaneous exposure to community, family and partner violence) among young people, and this study looks at the gap in research on such cumulative violence exposure on adolescent mothers. The findings suggest that simultaneous and severe violence, impacts of witnessing parental violence, linkages between family and partner violence, and exposure to cumulative violence could be barriers to positive school outcomes. The findings show the importance of assessing for violence exposure among pregnant and parenting adolescent women. The need to understand and focus on identifying the protective processes that contribute to resilience would improve advocating for the supports to enhance this resilience, instead of focusing on the perceived deficits or problems of non-white urban adolescent mothers. The research points to the importance of a caring adult, mentor or role model for these young women.
URI:	https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/16651
ISSN:	1077-8012
Appears in Collections:	Journal Articles

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