Introduction
John Robinson is a fifteen-year-old Black male who lives with his mother, Joan, and her boyfriend in a low-income neighborhood. John goes to school and tries to get good grades while also working part-time at a local tire shop, which is a hard job for a young man due to the physical strain. However, he prefers not to return home because her mother’s boyfriend is always there, drinking excessively, smoking marijuana, and being mentally and physically abusive towards her. While John has expressed his concerns over the fact that the boyfriend is leeching off Joan and she should dump him “for good,” she responded that John was too young to get “involved in grown-ups’ relationships.”
However, one day, John returned home after a day of hard work and saw his mother with a bruise and a swollen cheek, and he immediately understood what happened, the boyfriend was not there. The teenager got extremely angry and ran out to find the perpetrator, and when he did, he started a fight. To the bystanders, it looked as though John was the attacker and Joan’s boyfriend was innocent, so they called the police, who had to deal with the situation. John was arrested and taken to the police station, facing aggravated assault charges, but he is mainly concerned about his mother’s well-being because she was alone with her boyfriend.
Issue Identification
The issue associated with the described case pertains to partner violence, which John has consistently witnessed. Growing up with his mother being single and having no father figure in his life, it was concerning for him to witness abuse because he cared for Joan, she was the only relative in his life. According to NCADV (2020), one in four women and one in nine men experience severe intimate partner physical violence. Moreover, one in fifteen children is exposed to this kind of violence, with 90% of them being eyewitnesses to the violence (NCADV, 2020). Therefore, the particular issue was chosen not only because intimate partner violence is prevalent among women but also because the impact on children could be detrimental.
Individual Implications
No child would want their mother to get consistently abused, with no ramifications following. While John may understand that being a single mother is very hard and the support of a new family leader figure could be helpful, the abuse that has occurred has no place in his family. Like many other abuse victims, Joan does not leave his boyfriend in fear of being single as well as in fear of him getting angry and uncontrollable. However, her son witnessed the abuse and getting more and more frustrated a problem that resulted in more violence because he did not know how else he could protect his mother than to start a fight.
Conclusion
On a social scale, there are many reasons why women do not leave their abusive partners, with fear of danger, isolation, embarrassment, low confidence, or trauma standing in their way. In the described scenario, partner violence is not the only problem. John lived without a father, which is the circumstances negatively affecting young men in the long run (Wilcox, 2022). Joan’s boyfriend is in a vulnerable enough position to take advantage because the woman sought a father figure for her son. Overall, the situation has negative implications for society in general and specifically for younger people affected by life in fatherless households, due to them being more vulnerable.
References
NCADV. (2020). Statistics. Web.
Wilcox, B. (2022). ‘Life without father’: Less college, less work, and more prison for young men growing up without their biological father. Institute for Family Studies. Web.