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123 chapter 4 º Families, Children, and Motheringº the majority of the women I interviewed turned to—or attempted to turn to—their families for help before seeking assistance from state and nonprofit agencies. Some families ­ assisted the women in leaving while others pressured the women to stay with abusive partners. Although studies exist—and more are needed—on women’s experiences in seeking assistance from women’s organizations, nonprofit agencies, and state agencies in trying to leave abusive partners (for Peru, see Boesten 2006; Güezmes, Palomino, and Ramos 2002; Movimiento Manuela Ramos 2007. For elsewhere, see Hanmer and Itzin 2000; Haut­ zinger 2007; Santos 2005), research on the role of women’s families of origin and by marriage in aiding and blocking women ’s efforts to cope with or leave an abusive relationship is still underdeveloped (but see Abraham 2000; Raj et al. 2000; Van Vleet 2008).1 Additionally, in Peru, as in the United States, “the mother, not the father, is likely to be held responsible for child abuse or neglect either because of her presumed failure to protect her child or because of her silence” (Schneider 2000:148) in abusive home environments, yet our understanding of women’s own views of mothering within a violent home environment is an area of research in need of further attention. In all of the cases with which I became familiar, the women referred to their roles and responsibilities as mothers in discussing their decisions to leave, stay with, or return to an abusive partner. This chapter examines the realities of having—and not­ having—families and children for women attempting to survive within an abusive relationship or to leave it, and pays particular attention to how women understand their roles as mothers in these contexts.2 It discusses the existence of various forms of helpful, not-so-helpful, indifferent, and hostile families, and how a woman’s efforts to cope with or leave an abusive partner are supported or thwarted through interactions with her 124  �  the woman in the violence three families: her nuclear family, made up of the woman, her husband or conviviente, and their children; her family of origin, made up of her parents, siblings, and (sometimes) other relatives (such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, and godparents or ­ co-godparents); and her family by marriage, made up of her parents-in-law and brothers- and sisters-in-law. Jimena’s experiences , as narrated to me during her shelter residency and during phone conversations after she and her children returned home from the shelter, are the main vehicle in this chapter for the discussion and analysis of the role of families, mothering, and children in the lives of poor women in abusive relationships. For Jimena, as for many other women in Peru, the nuclear family is the ideal family form. In practice, as in other parts of the world, only a minority of families in Peru conform to this ideal: 34 percent of Peruvian families are nuclear families (Ponce 2007:99).3 Although it may be generally true that, as a popular introductory textbook on Latin America states, “for the poor, the [extended] family is not a mechanism to control resources, but an institution to turn to because of the scarcity of resources,” and that “their kinship networks . . . provide help in times of hardship” (Cubitt 1995:107), this was not generally true for the women I spoke with in Lima. In the cases with which I became familiar, including Jimena’s, it was more common for a woman’s nuclear family, family of origin, and in-laws to be unavailable or to play an active role in preventing the woman from leaving an abusive partner. Meeting Jimena As I opened the locked gate and then the front door to the shelter, a little boy I had not met before greeted me. After an excited “Hola!” and “You know what?” the skinny, bright-eyed boy began to describe how his father threw and broke things in his house when he became angry. A few seconds into the boy’s narrative, a young woman rushed in. Jimena, the boy’s mother, wanted to know whom her son was speaking with about these things. It was Valentine’s Day 2001, and my day at the “Women ’s Harmony House” shelter had just begun.4 After a couple of informal conversations and lots of playtime with the children at the shelter over the next two days, Jimena [52.14.130.13] Project MUSE...

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