Abstract

GELVAN DE VEINSTEN, Silvia B.. Young violence towards parents. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2004, n.esp, pp.205-220. ISSN 1668-7027.

This descriptive research was carried out at an institution we had established to assist victims of elder abuse. This was the first institution ever created in Argentina to specifically provide help to this kind of victims. The aim of present work was describe, and understand this phenomenon, and to explain its increasing trend.    In 1998, over 500 families from Buenos Aires and its suburbs (Argentina) had already come to our institution for counseling. Out of these cases, we randomly selected a sample of 240 families, on condition that the youth who abuse their elder in these families had not been battered children before. Seventy-five percent of these are middle-class families.    All parents were interviewed in order to obtain biographical data for their family encompassing three generations, that is, grandparents, parents, and sons. These data were grouped according to the five matrices of human behavior: biophysiological, existential, educational, psychodynamic, and sociocultural (Gelvan de Veinsten, 1998; Gelvan de Veinsten et al., 1998). Background and mode of occurrence of the violent behavior were recorded and organized according to this structure. Violent behavior was classified on a scale we devised in order to distinguish them, from the primary relationships in conflict. Concerning background, we took into account the various papers on violence from children towards their parents that will be discussed, but most of them have focused on young children, and parricide, which differ significantly from the type of cases we have dealt with.    After analyzing the cases, we were able to identify three basic typical forms of relationship between parents themselves, and between parents and their sons, which favor violent behavior, and we have also identified a corresponding background in previous generations of these families.

Keywords : Violence; abuse inflicted on parents; biographical background; parent-son relationship; elder abuse.

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