Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, violence against women is a significant threat to women’s and girls’ health and rights. Violence against women can occur in different forms over a woman’s entire lifetime and can have intergenerational impacts. Because the consequences of experiencing violence can be far-reaching, life course theory offers a useful perspective for explaining patterns between experiences with violence over time and the ways in which experiences with violence relate to other dimensions of women’s lives. In this dissertation, I utilized a life course perspective and mixed methods approach to assess patterns of violence against women over time and intergenerationally in a sample of women living in a context of high social vulnerability in the Dominican Republic. To complete this research, our study team conducted life history interviews and surveys with 102 women whose children participate in a national early childhood development program in the Dominican Republic. In my first paper, using the life history interviews, I aimed to describe patterns in experiences with violence over time, to relate these experiences to other dimensions of their lives, and to situate our understanding of women’s experiences with violence within the broader sociocultural context. In the second paper, I explored the connection between maternal adverse childhood experiences and the use of violent discipline practices with their children. Using primary survey data, I aimed to describe factors associated with violent discipline practices and to describe how stress, intimate partner violence, discrimination, and depression operated as potential mediators of the relationship between maternal adverse childhood experiences and discipline practices. In the final paper, I used this research as a case study to compare the findings from the life history interviews and surveys and to discuss the strengths and limitations of qualitative and quantitative methods to understand women’s experiences with violence.
