ORIGINAL ARTICLE Between Support and Vulnerability: Examining Family Support Among Women Victims of Intimate Partner Violence in Mexico Sonia M. Frías & María Carolina Agoff # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract Based on a recent survey and six focus groups, we use a mixed methods approach to examine the help-seeking behavior of Mexican female victims of partner violence in law-enforcement agencies and among family members. Support the family provides women is critically examined. The results of the study suggest that families are not always a source of support: 41 % of the women who turned to public authorities did not mention it to their families, and 11 % did not seek help because they feared their families would find out. Formal help-seeking at law-enforcement agencies is the only choice for many Mexican women since family support has a dual nature, positive and negative. Families may further victimize female victims since partner violence against wom- en triggers the contradiction among core familistic values: individual expectations (family obligations and support) might go against family expectations. Keywords Familism . Help-seeking . Violence against women . Domestic violence . Law-enforcement Introduction In Mexico, violence affects a significant number of women. According to data from the 2006 National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships (Encuesta Nacional sobre la Dinámica de las Relaciones en los Hogares, ENDIREH), 10.72 % of Mexican women who are currently married, cohabiting, separated, or divorced have been subject- ed to sexual intimate partner violence (IPV), and 23.72 % have experienced physical violence at the hands of their cur- rent or previous partner. While the consequences and factors surrounding women’ s experiences of IPV have been exten- sively studied in Mexico (Castro and Casique 2008; Oláiz et al. 2006; Rivera-Rivera et al. 2004), women’ s reactions and strategies for seeking help (or not) from public institutions and social networks have not received the same degree of attention (exceptions in Agoff et al. 2007; Frías 2013). Literature from around the world shows that social support networks and public institutions are instrumental in stopping IPV (Bosch and Bergen 2006; Frías and Angel 2007; Goodkind et al. 2003; Zakar et al. 2012). In Mexico, as op- posed to other countries (Barrett and Pierre 2011; Fanslow and Robinson 2010), there are no studies using representative samples that make it possible to evaluate the extent of the search for help in informal networks, and especially in the family. According to Parsons (1955), the family is an institution or organization based on predictable relationships, which repre- sents a source of security and an instrument to confront a hostile world and difficult relationships. The security and trust family interactions provide are what have shaped the concept of familism (Heller 1970), a central trait of Mexican and Mexican-American culture and families (Harris et al. 2005; Heller 1970; Ingram 2007). Familism is the result of a set of normative beliefs that emphasize the centrality of the family and stress the obligations and support that nuclear family members owe to one another (Sabogal et al. 1987 ). According to Sabogal et al. (1987), familism is manifested in three main realms: the belief that family members must provide economic and emotional support to each other (famil- ial obligations); the perception that family members are a de- pendable source of help, should be united and have close S. M. Frías (*) : M. Carolina Agoff Regional Center for Multidisciplinary Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Avda. Universidad s/n, Circuito 2, 62210 Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico e-mail: sfrias@correo.crim.unam.mx S. M. Frías e-mail: sonifrias@hotmail.com J Fam Viol DOI 10.1007/s10896-015-9677-y