Women experiencing the intergenerationality of conjugal violence

OBJECTIVE: to analyze the family relationship, in childhood and adolescence, of women who experience conjugal violence. METHOD: qualitative study. Interviews were held with 19 women, who were experiencing conjugal violence, and who were resident in a community in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The project was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (N. 42/2011). RESULTS: the data was organized using the Discourse of the Collective Subject, identifying the summary central ideas: they witnessed violence between their parents; they suffered repercussions from the violence between their parents: they were angry about the mother's submission to her partner; and they reproduced the conjugal violence. The discourse showed that the women witnessed, in childhood and adolescence, violence between their parents, and were injured both physically and psychologically. As a result of the mother's submission, feelings of anger arose in the children. However, in the adult phase of their own lives, they noticed that their conjugal life resembled that of their parents, reproducing the violence. CONCLUSION: investment is necessary in strategies designed to break inter-generational violence, and the health professionals are important in this process, as it is a phenomenon with repercussions in health. Because they work in the Family Health Strategy, which focuses on the prevention of harm and illness, health promotion and interdepartmentality, the nurses are essential in the process of preventing and confronting this phenomenon.