Red Sistémica · Violence
Child-to-parent violence: an emerging phenomenon
In late 2005, readers of the Spanish press discovered what appeared to be a new and worrying social phenomenon: child-to-parent violence. Is it really a new phenomenon? Partly yes, partly no. What is unprecedented is its public emergence in the form of complaints, its dramatic increase and, above all, its appearance in “normalised” families, among adolescents who had until then been labelled as “normal”.
Editor’s note from Perspectivas Sistémicas
This paper was presented at the 2nd Relates Conference (Ibero-Latin American Network of Systemic Schools), held in June of this year at the Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona. The same article will be part of the monographic issue on violence of the journal Mosaico (journal of the Spanish Federation of Family Therapy Associations), due out in March 2007. The next Relates Conference will be held from 4 to 6 July 2007 in Buenos Aires and will be organised by the ESA (Escuela Sistémica Argentina).
The text below is the excerpt published by the journal; the full text appeared in Perspectivas Sistémicas no. 92.
“Child-to-parent violence has always existed, although it has rarely come to light.”
Roberto Pereira Tercero and Tatiana Pérez García
Introduction
Regular readers of the press were most certainly surprised, in late 2005, to read about what appeared to be a new and worrying social phenomenon: child-to-parent violence.
The judicial reports for that year showed dramatic increases in the complaints filed by parents allegedly assaulted by their children: 5,500 complaints in 2005 in Spain (report of the Public Prosecutor’s Office), complaints multiplied by 8 over the last 4 years (Prosecutor’s Office of Catalonia), by 4 over the same period (Prosecutor’s Office of the Basque Country) or by 3 over the last 2 years (Prosecutor’s Office of the Valencian Community).
5,500
complaints from parents assaulted by their children in Spain in 2005
× 8
in four years in Catalonia
× 4
over the same period in the Basque Country
× 3
in two years in the Valencian Community
These figures were soon joined by feature articles, with headlines such as “He is 7 and already an abuser” (El Mundo supplement, 12/12/05), “When the son hits the father” (El País, 30/10/05) or “Killing for fun” (El Semanal, 08/01/06).
Despite these headlines, the picture conveyed by the press was on the whole fairly measured; it merely emphasised the exponential growth of recent years and the young age of some of the reported cases.
That said, are we facing a new phenomenon? Partly yes, partly no. Child-to-parent violence has always existed, although it has rarely come to light, and it was generally attributed to a psychiatric pathology or to extreme wickedness: delusional and/or hallucinatory disorders, mental deficiency or autism, withdrawal syndrome in drug addicts or highly psychopathic personality structures.
What is absolutely new is its public emergence – in the form of judicial complaints –, its dramatic increase and above all its appearance in families that are for the most part “normalised”, in which the violent children present no associated prior psychopathology, have no criminal record and show no dissocial behaviour in any context other than the family: in other words, they are frequently adolescents and/or young people who had until then been labelled as “normal”.
Key takeaway
What is new is not the violence of children towards their parents, but its judicial visibility, its rapid growth and its appearance in families with no identifiable pathology or history. That, for the authors, is where the truly emerging character of the phenomenon lies.
Definition
We define this child-to-parent violence as repeated acts of physical violence (assaults, blows, shoving, throwing objects), verbal violence (repeated insults, threats) or non-verbal violence (threatening gestures, breaking cherished objects) directed against the parents or against the adults who take their place.
1
Physical violence
Assaults, blows, shoving, throwing objects.
2
Verbal violence
Repeated insults, threats.
3
Non-verbal violence
Threatening gestures, breaking cherished objects.
This therefore excludes isolated violence (a single episode), violence linked to mental disorders or to substance use, and parricide: all of them obviously violent behaviours, but whose characteristics distinguish them from this type of violence…
Who are the authors
Roberto Pereira Tercero is director of the Centre for Intervention in Child-to-Parent Violence of the Basque-Navarrese School of Family Therapy.
Tatiana Pérez García is a therapist at the Centre for Intervention in Child-to-Parent Violence of the Basque-Navarrese School of Family Therapy.
Contact for the Euskarri centre: euskarri@avntf-evntf.com
This article is an English translation of “Violencia filio-parental: un fenómeno emergente”, published by Red Sistémica (first published in Perspectivas Sistémicas, n° 92, 2006). Translated and republished with the journal’s permission.
Read the original articleHow to cite this article
Pereira Tercero, R., & Pérez García, T. (2022). Child-to-parent violence: an emerging phenomenon (Complexe Systémique, Trans.). Complexe Systémique. https://app.complexe-systemique.com/en_GB/articles/child-to-parent-violence-an-emerging-phenomenon (Original work published in 2006 in Perspectivas Sistémicas, n° 92, 2006; republished in 2022 by Red Sistémica, https://redsistemica.ar/2022/08/01/violencia-filio-parental-un-fenomeno-emergente/)
To go further
- Violence: understanding and interveningA systemic framework for reading intrafamily violence, including the violence that flows upwards from children to parents.
- Clinical work with family violence. Interview with Silvia MestermanHow an Argentine team organises therapeutic intervention in the face of violence within the family.
- Parentification: when to worry and what to doWhen the family hierarchy is inverted: another face of the reversal of places between parents and children.
- An ecological understanding of child-to-parent violenceThe in-depth analysis, factors and sequence, by the same author.
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