Violence in relationships: a youth perspective
Violence is a social concern that is endemic within our society at many levels and in a variety of forms. During the life-stage of adolescence, youth are engaged in completing crucial life-tasks and as such, are especially vulnerable to the effects of violence as both perpetrators and victims.
The goal of the proposed paper is to present a youth perspective of how violence has featured in the course of the lives of youth in the context of their relationships.
The research study fell within the paradigm of qualitative research and employed an exploratory, descriptive and contextual design. Within this design, the strategy of inquiry utilised to actualise data collection was the auto/biographic narrative.
Data analysis included both content/text analysis and narrative/discourse analysis. The themes that emerged from the process of analysis were compared and contrasted with the existing body of knowledge in order to verify the findings.
From the findings a central storyline was identified and this was as follows:
From the narratives of youth, the picture that emerged as the data was reviewed is that youth’s experiences of violence reflect a number of ambiguities:
o Conflicting messages about values and norms
o Ambiguities about relationships and the boundaries in relationships
o Confusion/Ambivalence about what level of violence or abuse warrants action
o Contradictions/paradoxes about roles in violence - men are perpetrators and women the victims, yet at times women provoke the violence;
o Ambivalence about self.
The conclusion drawn is that in order to rewrite the existing scripts for the perpetuation of relationship violence, youth need to engage in a process of examining the learned narratives in order to make new meaning for effective or meaningful relationships. It is contended that this process would involve a process of re-storying - a process of making sense of the conflicts and turmoil resulting from past and present experiences, and ultimately exercising choices about preventing violence in relationships.