This chapter explores the ecology of human development, those forces in the person's environment that affect and influence development. Urie Bronfenbrenner's model of the human ecosystem guides the discussion, making connections between children in families and in communities and the larger society that surrounds them. The human ecosystem model is much like the study of the natural ecology, focusing on the interactions between subjects at various levels of the environment as they affect each other. The interaction between individual and environment forms the basis of an ecological approach to human development. This view sees the process of development as the expansion of the child's conception of the world and the child's ability to act on that world. Risks to development can come from both direct threats and the absence of opportunities for development. Sociocultural risk refers to the impoverishment in the child's world of essential experiences and relationships.

The Ecology of Human Development

Society and the Healthy Homosexual

Violent Betrayal: Partner Abuse in Lesbian Relationships.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people

Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them: Battered Gay Men and Domestic Violence.

This thesis presents an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of intimate partner (IPA) between an adult sample of non-heterosexual women living in Ireland who experienced IPA in a female-to-female relationship. The research on which it is based is concerned with understanding the nature and the experience of intimate partner abuse. With a principal aim of capturing and representing the participants' own unique views and subjective experiences, this thesis is also concerned with presenting an understanding of the broader societal contexts that ultimately shape and influence the subjective experiences of those women. Utilising a qualitative methodological approach, an in-depth understanding of intimate partner abuse is achieved by engaging adult women. Situated within an interpretative phenomenological perspective, the research draws on qualitative data generated via semi-structured, in depth interviews with 9 women who self-identified as having experienced intimate partner abuse in a previous same sex relationship. Key findings emerging from this thesis suggest that non-heterosexual women are experiencing diverse forms of abusive behaviours from their female partners involving coercive control, physical, financial, identity, and sexual abuse, and incurring impacts during and post-relationship, and longer-term, that affect mental and physical well-being. Help-seeking is principally directed toward informal support options (friends), counselling services are the most sought formal support option while domestic violence services are the least sought. Key findings from this research further identify that stereotypical perceptions of femininity, female-to-female relationships, and violence, negatively influence the familial and professional response to victims of female-to-female intimate partner abuse.

Lynne Mary Cahill

Papers

"Why would straight people think of it if we don't?" Intimate partner abuse amongst women in same sex relationships