violence against parents: family dynamics and keys for the intervention

Violence against parents:family dynamics and keys for

the intervention

Paris, 27th November 2010

Some facts

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Violence against parents: an emergent phenomenonNumbers (I)

About the increase of judicial complaints:

Autonomous community

Period Increase

Cataluña 2000-2004 X 8

Valencia 2000-2004 X 14

País Vasco 2002-2003 X 3

Alicante 2003-2005 X 3

La Rioja 2005 30% de denuncias por violencia filio-parental


Violence against parents judicial complaints in Spain(*)

60006200640066006800700072007400760078008000

2005 2006 2007

númerodedenuncias

2005 6.700

2006 7.300

2007 8.000

Increase 16.25%

(*)Source: El Correo (19/05/2008)


Adolescence Violence against parents:Contextual and personal characteristics

Calvete, E., Orúe, I. y Sampedro, R. (2009). En Prensa

Longitudinal studies. 1.477 adolescent sample

between 12 and 17 years old. 7,2% has attacked their parents

once at least.


Relationship between women attacked and their aggressors

Gobierno Vasco - Agintzari

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Servicio de Atención Telefónica para Mujeres Víctimas de Violencia Masculina Doméstica

DEFINITION AND TYPES OF VIOLENCE

AGAINST PARENTS


DefinitionPhysical violence (aggressions, pushes, throwing objects) or verbal violence (repetitive insults, menaces) o non verbal violence (aggression menaces, broking appreciate objects), make them repetitive against parents or their tutors.


Violence against parents types

Traditional VAP: problem add to another big one.

New VAP: the VAP as the main problem


“Traditional” violence against parents

Autism or serious mental deficiency.

Mental disorders: delirious or hallucinations.

Mental disorders related with

drug-addition.


“Traditional” violence against parents

Adolescents that defence themselves being victims of abuse.

Violence used as a way of protection.

Retaliation: child abused or abandoned that return the treatment when the roles change.


“New” Violence (I)

It’s a new intra-family violence model, in one hand related with the “control” and “power” and in the other, with the obtaining of objectives.


“New” Violence (II)

Children, adolescents and young people, visibly “settled down”, with more or less violence behaviour extended, but often reduce to the family surrounding.


“New” Violence (III)

Often Drug-taking. But these consumes don’t appear in the “centre” of the problem, “additional” problem or “facilitator” of the violence.


“New” Violence (IV)

Violence in “scale”: it starts with insults, continues with menaces and breaking objects and finishes with physical aggressions more and more serious.

This process could take years.


General facts (I)

Prevalence: very different numbers and little credible (from 0,6 to 16 %)

Age: often old parentsSocial level: from every socio-economical

levelGender:

Aggressor: inter-gender similar probabilityAttacked: mothers have more probabilities

SOCIAL CHANGES THAT FAVOURED VIOLENCE

AGAINST PARENTS


Social changes (I)Educational model change:

From authoritarianism to permissiveness.

From a hierarchic model (authoritarian) to a “democratic” bad understood model.

In family and school.


Social changes (II)

Educative conflicts between parents and teachers


Social changes (III)

in the number of children.

in the number of hours that parents stay at home: “key children”.


Social changes (IV)

Changes in family models: Nuclear family < 50 %


Social changes (V)

Changes in the family cycle: delay in the medium age of paternity

↓ “Aged parents”


Social changes (VI)

More permissive society with aggressive behaviour from children and less from the parents.

in the violent messages in de Media.


Pseudo-independence

These things make that parents authority decreased.

Many children accede to a pseudo-independence: their parents have abdicated in their roles and have to get in charge of their lives without an effective detachment.


Lack of de Legitimacy

Children have more power ,and in some occasion have all the power: despotic children.

However, they have not legitimacy to exercise power: to conserve it, they have to use violence.

Educative styles


Educative styles (II)

Gallagher (2004) correlates VAP with two educative styles:

Permissive-liberalAuthoritarian violent


Educative styles (IIIa)

Authoritarian-violent style

More related with traditional VAP


Educative styles (IIIb)

Multi-violent families

Violence as a conflict resolution method.


Educative styles (IIIc)

Any rebelliousness is punished with increase of the punishment, menaces, humiliations y violence.

Authoritarianism is not negotiable and it is exercise in a rigid and inflexible way.


Educative styles (IIId)

VAP appears as:DefensiveProtectionRetaliation In “mirror”Linked to serious psychopathology


Educative styles (IVa)

Permissive-liberal style(or punitive non strict)

More related with the New

VAP


Educative styles (IVb)

Rules not clear.

Children are often over-protected: they receive everything, without counterparts.


Educative styles (IVc)

Generates despotic children.

Low self-esteem.Low level of frustration.Low empathy.


Educative styles (Va)

negligent style

Related with both types of VAP


Educative styles (Vb)

Parents have abdicated from their role.

Absent of rules.Pseudo-independence and

parentalización of children.VAP as an imposition or to

refuse the role settled.

FAMILY FACTORS THAT FAVOUR THE VIOLENCE

AGAINST PARENTES


Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (Ia)

Family experience to solve conflicts using violence.


Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (Ib)

General violence: everybody against everybody.

Impasse Tension Tension Violence


Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (II)

Non normative parents “democratic”, excessively permissive, that love their children whatever they do.


Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (III)

Over-protective parents because different reasons: very wished child, late, fragile o adopted, well-disposed to satisfy every wish of their children.


Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (IV)

Parents in-satisfied with their role or verbalizations about their lives are empty.


Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (Va) Conflictive relationship

between parents.

Mutual des-qualifications

Triangulation


Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (Vb) In-consistence and disagree

between parents about the children education.

Arbitrariness in child punishments.


Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (VII)

Hierarchy problems:

parents that renounce their roles and refuse to establish rules.


Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (VIII)

Peace and family

harmony myth.


Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (IX)

“Passionate” relationship, “fusional” between one of the parents and the adolescent.


Malfunction Areas

Three areas:

Hierarchical organisation and establishment of rules.

Protection and secret. Separation and fusion.


Family types I

Mono-parental families with parent-child fusional relationship.

Families with deep disagrees between the couple:Triangulation.

Multi-violence families.


Family Types II

Almost in every family appears the fusion with one of the parents, previous to the appearance of the violence, with the other peripheral parent, absent or in-existent.


Process that causes the violence I

Conflict / distance between parents

Introduction of the child in the conflict

Triangulation


Process that causes the violence II

It doesn’t produces the treachery to the triangulated

child

Fusional relationship with the allied parent


Process that causes the violence III

Difficulties for separation and autonomy

Conflict between fusional relationship and the wish of

autonomy


Process that causes the violence IV

Appearance of the violence as desperate solution to move away

Seeing the secondary benefits in the violent behaviour that perpetuate the conflict.


Fusional relationship

Wished for both parts

Need of support, company, comfort

Privileged relationship, intimacy, satisfaction

Till the relationship finish itself


Violence behaviour bloom IV

The violent episode as a primitive mechanism of

keep away and separation


Euskarri

Violence Against Parents Intervention Protocol


Protocol intervention

Complex intervention

The protocol: Favours an well arranged intervention,

that facilitates the necessary contention and setting.

Defines clearly objectives and steps. Maintains a coherent line of intervention.


Therapeutic intervention

Starting always with a family intervention

Later: Interventions with other

subsistems: couple, sibling or another combinations or individual interventions


Inclusion Criteria

Families with children at any age. Protection or refuge institutions

for child and young people.That practice reiteratively

physical violence behaviour or non verbal violence against parents or tutors.


Exclusion Criteria

Isolated violenceViolence that happens in less

conscience situations: intoxications, mental disorder of the course or the content of thinking, autism or mental deficiency, that doesn’t repeats when the mental disorder or the intoxication diminishes.


OBJETIVES

Stop the violence behaviourPromote changes in the family

process and structure to prevent its reappearance

violence against parents: family dynamics and keys for the intervention

Documents

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