Violenza in famiglia: dalla violenza assistita al parent abuse

Partendo da una riflessione sul concetto di vittima-criminale, il presente contri-buto intende approfondire la relazione esistente tra violenza assistita e violenza agita dai minori nei confronti di genitori o tutori. Entrambe le forme di violenza pongono al centro il minore, che vive una condizione di estrema fragilità, dettata anche dall'incapacità di gestire adeguatamente le proprie emozioni. Tra i possibili effetti da annoverare vi sono sicuramente l'apprendimento di modelli relazionali disfunzionali e la trasmissione intergenerazionale della violenza, conseguenze che, in alcuni casi, possono trasformare i minori in maltrattanti. È necessario, pertanto, valutare precocemente i fattori di rischio e individuare le traiettorie volte alla pre-venzione e alla riduzione di tali fenomeni, che sembrano strettamente correlati.

A Social-Cognitive Investigation of Young Adults Who Abuse Their Parents

Within the past decade, there has been an increase in research focusing on young people who abuse their parents. However, most research has narrowly focused on adolescent children, neglecting to investigate the nature, pattern, and factors related to child-to-parent abuse perpetrated by young adults. This article integrated two complementary social-cognitive theories of aggression to explore factors associated with perpetration of child-to-parent abuse among university students ( N = 435, aged 18–25 years). Participants completed the Abusive Behavior by Children–Indices, a self-report measure that was designed to differentiate abusive and normative child-to-parent behavior. The results highlight that abuse is not limited to adolescent children, as one in seven young adults were categorized as abusive toward a parent over the previous 12 months. Sons were more likely than daughters to report abusing their parents. Specifically, sons disclosed greater rates of father abuse than daughters, but similar rates of mother abuse. Hierarchical logistic regression found that exposure to marital violence, parent-to-child aggression, trait anger, and aggressive scripts were significant predictors of both mother and father abuse. However, other factors related to abuse differed according to which parent was the target of abuse. For instance, male sex was a significant predictor of father abuse, whereas rumination and impulsive emotional regulation were significant predictors of mother abuse. Overall, father abuse was better explained by the model than mother abuse. The results suggest that although factors related to general aggressive behavior may be good predictors for father abuse, additional factors may be needed to explain mother abuse.

“But All Kids Yell at Their Parents, Don’t They?”: Social Norms About Child-to-Parent Abuse in Australia

Child-to-parent abuse has been hampered by a lack of attention to what behaviors are commonly perceived as abusive and a poor understanding of when children’s behavior stops being difficult, but normative, and becomes abusive. This study investigated what Australian parents and young people perceived as abusive behavior by children toward parents. Convenience samples of (a) parents of young people aged 14 to 25 years ( n = 201) and (b) young people aged 14 to 25 years ( n = 586) were asked to define at what frequency they believed that 40 child-to-parent behaviors became abusive. Both parents and young people perceived that children could abuse their parents, but young people were more permissive when defining abuse than were parents for behaviors involving physical aggression without injury, financial abuse, humiliation, or intimidation. The findings have implications for child-to-parent abuse measurement, particularly in relation to how coercive and verbally aggressive behavior is (or is not) defined as abusive.