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Parent Abuse: A Well-Kept Secret

By Barbara Cottrell
Captain William Spry Community Centre

Today, in Canada, many parents are being abused by their teenage children. Unfortunately, this is one of society's secrets. The issue of parent abuse is as socially neglected as woman abuse was twenty years ago. There are striking similarities between current attitudes towards parent abuse and the old attitudes towards partner abuse. Years ago people thought the abuse of women by their intimate partners was a rare occurrence and victims were blamed with statements such as 'she must like it or why would she stay?' and 'she probably provoked him'. It was seen as private family trouble, women kept their victimization secret, and there were few supports available. Since then, family violence has come to public attention and policies and supports have been put in place to help protect women from abusive partners, and to hold men responsible for the abuse they perpetrate. There has been no such shift in thinking with parent abuse. Parents are usually the first people blamed for the behaviour of their teenagers, and there are few supports and interventions to help them. Consequently, many parents are too ashamed to tell anyone about the abuse. There is also little research or public awareness of parent abuse.

In an attempt to address this, three Halifax groups, (the Captain William Spry Community Centre, the Committee Against Woman Abuse and the Family Services Association,) founded the Parent Abuse Project in 1994 and began to conduct research so they could produce information material that was accessible to parents and the public. The research included interviewing parents, service providers and teenagers, and reading literature on the topic. Other groups, including the men's intervention program, New Start Counseling, joined in the work. Funded by Health Canada and Justice Canada, we listened to mothers' stories of abuse; we listened to service providers and to young people, and we wrote about what we heard. The information in this article is based on that research.

Parent abuse crosses all social and cultural lines. It affects poor and rich parents, parents who have many years of education and those with less, and parents in many countries in the world. We also know that mothers are more often, and more severely abused than fathers.

All families experience occasional conflict, so sometimes parents have difficulty naming the abuse because it is not always clear when teenage behaviours are 'normal' and when they are 'abusive.' Any behaviour that is deliberately harmful and used as a form of control, whether it is physical, psychological/emotional or financial, may be defined as abuse.

Parent abuse ranges from mild to severe, and usually begins with verbal abuse. The most common forms are put downs and threats. Teenagers may make unrealistic demands on parents, such as insisting they drop what they're doing to comply with the child's demands. A common form of this type of abuse is to threaten to tear the phone out of the wall if the parents don't end their telephone conversation. Some teens keep their parents in a state of fear by threatening to run away from home. Sometimes they carry out the threat and stay out all night. The threat of suicide is common. Abusive teenagers also intimidate their parents by playing malicious mind games and trying to make the parents think they are crazy. They degrade their parents, tell them they hate them, and threaten to hurt, maim or kill them or someone else, or the parents' pets. Some teenagers abuse their parents financially and they may demand that the parents spend money they cannot afford, or steal from them. Some teenagers physically assault their parents, pushing them down stairs, hitting, punching and kicking them. Most physically abused parents are also emotionally abused.

Women may be more often abused than fathers because children of all ages spend more time with their mothers than their fathers. Fathers are often physically or emotionally absent, and many mothers feel they are single parenting, even when a man lives in the house. Mothers also tend to have a closer emotional connection to their children. Children usually talk to their mothers and express their feelings, including anger, more. One mother said:

"You do so much for your children. You don't expect to be treated like that. It seems that they lash out at the people who do the most for them. So mothers really bear the brunt of it."

Often men are seen as strong and intimidating and teenagers often say they wouldn't dare hit their fathers. Teens have told us: "I'm scared of my father. He's bigger and stronger than me." Another said, "It's a male thing: we're all scareder of men. Dads say, 'Do it. I mean it. Do it now.' and you do. Moms are a pushover."

Parent abuse is often present in homes where teenagers have been exposed to their mother's abuse by her partner. They grow up seeing their mother victimized and treat her the same. Sometimes it is when the woman leaves her abusive partner that the children begin to abuse her. One mother who is being abused by both her teenage daughter recently said, "The girls were born into a violent home. Before they were born, I had a number of miscarriages as a result of beatings from my husband." The woman finally escaped, went into a shelter, and then married a man who abused both her and the girls. The girls are now out of control and extremely abusive towards her.

Our social concept of motherhood may also contribute to the silence around parent abuse. We see children who are acting out and immediately think it is the parents' fault. By 'parents' we usually mean mother. Women are so afraid of being judged as a 'bad' mother they keep the abuse secret. Linda said that she would not ask her colleagues for support because:

"[They] were making comments that led me to feel more responsible and guilty that I already did. I often heard professionals explain children's bad behaviour as the result of poor parenting practices and lack of boundaries. They think it must be the mother's fault. They thought I must be doing something wrong because Robert . was not abused, we were not alcoholics or drug users and there was no sexual abuse in the immediate family or even way back. Because I am a professional, well-educated woman, they thought, "Why couldn't she handle things better? How could she let this happen?"

Although they try hard to fix the problem, without support parents live in a state of despair that erodes their self-confidence and makes the problem even more acute. Most mothers are confused and sad and don't understand why the abuse is happening. One mother said, "You set out with the white picket fence and you think you're going to have the perfect family and the perfect kids. You try so hard."

While parents have to take responsibility for their parenting, and it is true that some parents are overly-permissive or the opposite, overly-authoritarian, most have tried their best, and made mistakes as all parents do. However, they report that when they seek help they feel blamed by professionals for their teens' abuse. Linda felt that she had "bad parent" stamped on her forehead. Another mother said:

I feel so awful after I leave the counsellor's office. I cry all the way home. I am such a mess, I go to my family doctor on a regular basis and he usually makes me feel better. He says, "I've known you since you were sixteen and I know you're a good person, and if somebody's making you feel you're not, don't listen to them. Just because they're in the profession it doesn't mean they know. They don't know you and they don't know everything."

Feeling blamed is not helpful. Abused parents need support to help them cope while they try to establish compassionate and loving leadership in their families. They are desperate for help but rarely find it. In the case of parent abuse, adequate supports are not in place. Police are sometimes named as the most helpful, other times they are named as the worst. The likelihood of police assistance appears to depend on the skill of individual officers and their location. Child welfare services have publicly stated that they are mandated to protect children who are abused and do not have the resources to work with victimized parents. Counsellors frequently tell parents to strengthen their boundaries and create consequences for the abusive adolescent but it is precisely when they try to do that that the abuse occurs. Parents who approach psychiatrists and psychologists for help may be similarly disappointed. Mental health professionals may respond by pathologizing the abuse, that is labelling it, for example, a conduct disorder, and treating it like a disease rather than supporting the mothers to regain a leadership role in the family.

Most service providers refer parents to another agency. For example, a woman who was seeing a psychiatrist with her teenage daughter was told to call the police. The psychiatrist would not discuss the fact that the girl was locking her mother in closets and throwing her down the stairs. When contacted, the police informed the woman that she needed to take her daughter to a psychiatrist.

Another mother said: "[I feel] so bad for the moms. There isn't any glaring commonality. You could think that it's learning disabilities or physical challenges. Scary, but it could be single parenthood. It could be under-bonding or over-attachment. It could be witnessing abuse but not all of the kids did. Mostly what comes across is the lack of help and authorities' misunderstanding."

Parent abuse affects the whole family. Many parents fear for the physical and emotional safety of their other children. They worry that the other children will also be abused, or will copy the abusive behaviour. Sometimes the siblings are disturbed by the abusive family environment and leave home at the first opportunity. This adds a further layer of anxiety and sadness for the parents. Extended family and friends may also have difficulty coping with the abuse. Some withdraw their support, increasing the isolation of abused mothers.

As a society, instead of holding mothers solely responsible for their teens' behaviour, we need to take collective responsibility. When we realistically look at who is influencing them, we see that it is a complex web. As one social worker put it: "All adults are parenting the next generation, and community members of all kinds, including neighbours, relatives, teachers, ministers, social workers, and the police, all share responsibility for what happens to our children."

Parents who are being abused, and the service providers they talk to, get mired in looking for the cause and they miss the first and essential act: to help parents regain their leadership in the family. One of the reasons why looking for causes is not a good place to start is that in few families is there just one identifiable reason why the abuse is happening. There is no simple answer; no clear cause of parent abuse. There is a myriad of possible causes: societal and cultural values, family dynamics, and the individual development of the child may all play a role. Sometimes they are so related or inter-twined it is almost impossible to separate them and to figure out what is a cause and what is the result of the abuse. Sometimes things that look like a cause - the child smoking pot, for example - is in fact just a symptom of the problem. Blaming the parents is clearly an inadequate explanation. Once the abuse is over and parents are once again in loving and compassionate control of their children, then, and only then, should people look for causes if they think it will be helpful.

An eight-page overview of parent abuse is available free from the Captain William Spry Community Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia at www.sprycentre.ns.ca (go to Research and scroll down to bottom of the page,) by emailing your address to Linda Roberts at robertl@region.halifax.ns.ca, or leaving your mailing address by phone at (902) 479-4877.

Parent Abuse: The Abuse Of Parents By Their Teenage Children is available free from the National Clearinghouse on Family Violence Tel: 1-800-267-1291 or on the web: www.hc-sc.gc.ca/nc-cn.