Parricide and Violence against Parents

Parricide and Violence Against Parents takes a historical and criminological approach to the research on parricide and violence against parents, placing the research in the context of social development from the 1500s to contemporary society, and giving a global overview and comparison. The book examines parricide and violence against parents as historically and culturally sensitive phenomena. It offers evidence on a seemingly rare subject from different eras, areas, and cultures, and then uses the cross-disciplinary data to produce a new, systematic insight for the reader. Case studies shift the discussion from the contemporary focus on adolescent to parent abuse, to examining the sources of conflict during life cycles of parents and their offspring. A historical approach illuminates the variations in conflicts between parents and their offspring that are shaped by the life stages of the victims and offenders themselves across time. The book argues that parental authority has been marked by property ownership and tax paying responsibilities throughout history. The continued possession of property resulted in power, the reluctance to part with it, becoming a notable source of conflict across generations within families. Parental authority was protected by means of heavy penalties and punishments and didactic teachings in almost every society at every stage of historical development. It was also challenged constantly by children as a part of their coming into adulthood. The abuse of parents has often been connected to situations where adult children were prevented from gaining the amount of independence appropriate to their position in life. This led to disputes over authority and the legitimate grounds for that authority. Offering an insight into complicated and interconnected histories of generational conflicts and how they affect modern families in different parts of the world, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, history of crime, history of the family, family violence, homicide studies, gender studies, history of emotions, political violence, and social work.

Marianna G. Muravyeva is Professor of Russian Law at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Phillip Shon is Professor of Criminology at the Ontario Tech University, Canada. Raisa Maria Toivo is Professor of History at the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experience at Tampere University, Finland.

Introduction Part I. Approaches to violence against parents Chapter 1: Defining violence against parents Chapter 2: Conceptualising violence against parents Chapter 3: Historicising violence against parents Part II. Criminology of violence against parents Chapter 4: Defining the crime Chapter 5: Examining the offenders Chapter 6: Responding to violence against parents Part III. Regional overviews: where and when Chapter 7: European parricide and parent abuse Chapter 8: Modernising parricide: the US and the West Chapter 9: In the heart of patriarchy: the Far East Chapter 10: Colonialism and resistance Conclusion Index