Tova Band-Winterstein

“Aging Out” of Violence: The Multiple Faces of Intimate Violence Over the Life Span

In this article, we explore how continuous intimate partner violence is experienced in old age and how age and violence interact and change throughout the life span. This is a qualitative study based on a phenomenological perspective focusing on the lived experiences of the elderly who have dwelled in domestic violence most of their lives. The sample consisted of 40 informants. In-depth, semistructured interviews were performed. Content analysis of the interviews yielded four clusters of living in violence over time: (a) The arena of violence is alive and active, (b) violence is in the air, (c) more of the same but differently, and (d) violence through illness to the very end. These clusters are discussed and their implications for practice are suggested.

Between Remembering and Forgetting The Experience of Forgiveness among Older Abused Women

‘Lived experiences’ of forgiveness of older abused women throughout a life in intimate partner violence are described and analysed from a phenomenological perspective. Semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 older abused Jewish women in Northern Israel. The data were analysed along two dimensions: one related to the need to explore who forgives whom; the other to various ways of forgiving, starting from not forgetting and not forgiving, moving through forgiveness experienced as burden, the struggle between forgetting and remembering as an obstacle to forgiveness at the same time, remembering without verbalizing violence, ‘giving in’, and ending with forgiving and not forgetting. The discussion deals with the ways forgiveness enables the bridging between suffering, martyrdom, strength resulting from wisdom of age and survival. The meaning of being an older abused woman in the light of this duality is explored.

Narratives of aging in intimate partner violence: The double lens of violence and old age

PURPOSE With the increase in life expectancy, couples living in intimate partner violence are aging together. The aim of this article is to explore the constructions of aging in intimate partner violence as narratives of couplehood or narratives of old age. DESIGN AND METHODS Thirty individual in-depth interviews with 15 older Israeli couples were tape-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed using a narrative approach. RESULTS Three main domains emerged from the data: health issue narratives, loneliness narratives and relationships with adult offspring narratives. Each of the narratives that emerged from the data analysis consists of a narrative of old age constructing IPV and a narrative of IPV constructing old age. IMPLICATIONS Conflictual couplehood dynamics, such as intimate partner violence in old age, is not one-dimensional, but is diverse and complex and this should be taken into consideration.

Dimensions of Suffering among Old and Young Battered Women

This article is a qualitative analysis of the ways in which young and old battered women perceive, understand and experience suffering from violence. The sample included 40 participants, composed of 17 elderly Israeli Jewish women, aged 60 to 84, and 23 younger women, aged 23 to 49. We collected data by in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with young and old battered women. Content analysis yielded several common themes: Suffering through isolation and control; enduring bodily pain; estrangement, alienation and loneliness in one’s own dwelling; time as a source of suffering; significant; others as a mirror of the self; enduring to emotional suffering; and accumulated life wisdom. These themes constitute the basis for the forthcoming analysis and discussion.

Giving Voice to ‘Age at the Edge’ – A Challenge for Social Workers Intervening with Elder Abuse and Neglect

The purpose of this qualitative study was to learn about social workers’ experience of the therapeutic encounter with victims and perpetrators of elder abuse and neglect and its implications for their personal and professional lives. Participants were 17 experienced women social workers, who worked with abused and neglected older adults in Israel. Data were collected by in-depth semi-structured interviews, which were later transcribed and content analyzed. Four main themes were revealed: (1) The Complexity of the Experience of the Therapeutic Encounter; (2) Circles Echoing Between the Professional and the Personal; (3) Between Growth and Attrition; and (4) Experiencing the Mission and its Meaning. As time is running out for older adults, the “now or never” perspective shapes social workers’ encounter with elder abuse opening a unique kind of dialogue. Implications for practice and further research are discussed.

The Impact of Lifelong Exposure to IPV on Adult Children and Their Aging Parents

Most literature on exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) has focused on young children. However, adult children, who have witnessed IPV throughout their lives, bear the effects and continue to be affected by their parents’ ongoing IPV. The purpose of this article is to explore the “lived experiences” of adult children exposed to their parents’ IPV throughout a lifetime. This qualitative study was conducted based on the phenomenological perspective. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with 25 adults aged 30 to 55 years. Content analysis yielded four themes: (a) What type of family do I have: Normal or abnormal; (b) Once violent, always violent; (c) Once my parents, always my parents: To care or not to care; (d) What do I take along with me? Reflections over time. These themes are discussed and practical implications are suggested.

“We Take Care of the Older Person, Who Takes Care of Us?”: Professionals Working With Older Persons in a Shared War Reality

The aim of this article is to describe and analyze how professional gerontological workers (PGWs) from northern Israel experienced a shared reality during the Second Lebanon War: how they perceived clients’ needs and their own needs, how they and their older clients functioned during this crisis, and what could be learned about the experience by exploring the PGWs’ perspective. Data were based on materials collected from four PGW focus groups held simultaneously after the war, using a phenomenological perspective to analyze content expressed by individuals, not group dynamics. Findings presented three identified themes: being caught between personal life and professional obligations, acting out of resilience and growth versus vulnerability and despair, and integrating past and present experiences to learn for future events. The discussion uses a phenomenology perspective to reexamine the coexistence of vulnerability in the two populations that share mutual experiences. Further studies and intervention implications are suggested.

Harmed? Harmful? Experiencing Abusive Adult Children With Mental Disorder Over the Life Course

Older parents of an adult child coping with a mental disorder that is expressed by violent deviant behavior face significant parenting challenges. The purpose of this article is to explore the ways older parents exposed to abuse by their adult children with mental disorder (ACMD) perceived their child’s violent deviant behavior along the life course. In a qualitative-phenomenological study, 16 parents aged 58 to 90 were interviewed in depth. Three major themes emerged: (a) ongoing total care for the child’s needs along the life course, (b) constructions and perceptions of the child through the years—Parents perceived their children over two continua, reflecting their experience of the child’s deviant behavior: the child as more harmed versus more harmful, the child as normative versus pathological—and (c) the parent’s emotional world toward the harmed–harmful child. The findings enable a deeper understanding of the various ways in which parents cope with living with deviant behaviors of their ACMD. Hence, this study can serve as a framework for developing tailored and differential intervention methods.

Health care provision for older persons: the interplay between ageism and elder neglect.

The aim of this study was to explore the link between neglect and ageism in health care provision for older persons. Semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 registered nurses with at least 2 years’ experience in 10 long-term care facilities in Israel. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data analysis was performed according to the qualitative method. Three main themes emerged: ageism and neglect as the everyday routine (neglect is built into institution life on the platform of ageism); how the institutional system promotes neglect—between institutional and personal ageism (the ways institutions promote neglect in the shadow of ageism); from vision to reality—how neglect can be prevented in an ageist reality. The attempt to demonstrate the link between ageism and neglect and suggesting how to include them as interrelated phenomena in health care provision programs could promote older persons’ quality of life.

I take them with me - reflexivity in sensitive research

What do we as researchers bring to the research we conduct? What do the participants and the topics under study evoke within us? These questions are well known within the qualitative research methodology. This paper aims at using reflexivity to describe researchers’ involvement at significant stages of the research and to help them deal with sensitive, ‘hard-to-swallow’ situations. In order to achieve that, we describe the reflexivity process we went through while conducting a research on elder self-neglect in Israel. We describe how reflexivity helped us at every stage of the research, from pre-research, through data collection and to data analysis.