Introduction

This chapter aims to contextualise ‘parent abuse’ within a wider framework of family abuse. It begins by providing an overview of the historical context, characteristics and prevalence of different kinds of abuse in families (ie, child abuse, intimate partner violence [IPV], elder abuse and sibling abuse) before identifying their conceptual similarities, differences and connections. The chapter then explores what we know about the prevalence and personal and situational characteristics of adolescent-to-parent abuse (eg, gender, age, ethnicity and so on) before considering the role of cultural context in its emergence and identification.

Abuse in families

While there is a dominant narrative within all cultures that families are a place of safety and protection, for many families across the world this is not the case. Indeed, Gelles and Straus (1979) suggest that the unique characteristics of the family make it the most violent of all institutions. These unique characteristics that enable its violence include:

• • the intensity of time that family members spend together;

• • the intensity of commitment that family members must make to each other;

• • the conflict-structured nature of family interactions, which have a competitive ‘zero-sum game’ quality to them (eg, family interactions over television channel choice, which means that, if one family member ‘wins’, another must ‘lose’);

• • the differing social locations of family members, in terms of age and gender (and the roles and statuses ascribed to these social locations);

• • the high degree of privacy the family enjoys away from formal controls and surveillance;

• • the extensive knowledge that family members have of each others’ social biographies and vulnerabilities;

• • the continual life transitions that a family must undergo (eg, births, divorces, deaths), which makes it particularly stress-prone.

Family abuse can be directed towards – and perpetrated by – spouses, parents, children, siblings and grandparents, as well as extended family members. In this book, ‘abuse’ is understood as a pattern of interaction that has the effect of disempowering an individual. Furthermore, given its relational nature, it requires both a degree of intentionality on the part of the perpetrator and an experience of disempowerment on the part of the abused. However, identifying what constitutes ‘abuse’ is problematic because ideas about what is ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ behaviour within the dynamic of ‘family relationships’ are both historically and culturally determined. Understanding the context of abuse is therefore critical to its identification, and perhaps the most important context is the harm caused.