Responding to child to parent abuse

Written by Dr Grace Krause and edited by Dr Kat Deerfield, Dr Eleanor Johnson, and Dr Flossie Caerwynt 

October 2025

Holt distinguishes between a one-off incident and a pattern of abuse. Relationships between parents and their children, especially teenage children, can often be turbulent, and it can be hard to discern when behaviour becomes abuse. There are other factors that make it difficult to write about aggression and violence against parents as a distinct phenomenon, or to understand how often it occurs (Holt, 2013).

How common is child to parent abuse?

Child to parent abuse can be particularly hard to measure for several reasons:

• people use lots of different terms when it comes to children’s violence against their parents and carers, so it’s hard to know if people across different studies mean the same thing (Clarke, 2015; Holt, 2022)
• parents are unlikely to disclose abuse they may experience from their children. This can be because they feel ashamed, afraid of making the abuse worse, or worried that their children may get in trouble (Holt, 2022; Baker, 2012a)
• even when the parents or children reach out for support, they will likely do so with different people and organisations. This makes it hard to know what data to use to find out how often children are abusive to their parents (Holt, 2022).

Parental Education and Growth Support carried out a survey of 200 parents who had experienced abuse from their children (2022) and found that:

• in 58 per cent of cases, abuse had started when the child was 10 years old or younger
• in 23 per cent of cases, abuse had started at age five or younger.

Different studies show that mothers or other female carers seem to be more likely to experience child to parent abuse (Simmons et al., 2018; Holt, 2022). The information is more mixed in terms of which children are more likely to be abusive towards their parents. One study found that the majority (81 per cent) of cases reported to the police involved sons (Holt, 2022). But other studies have found that daughters were just as likely to admit to having been abusive against their parents or carers (Simmons et al., 2018). While there’s no definitive evidence on what family forms are more likely to have issues with child to parent abuse, there’s some indication that single mothers are more likely to experience child to parent abuse (Baker and Bonnick, 2021).

For all of these reasons, it can be hard to make any claims about how common child to parent abuse is, or if it has become more common. However, there are some themes that appear in the data that can help us better understand the phenomenon and which we explore later in this evidence summary. These themes are:

• understanding child to parent abuse as gender-based violence
• links between child to parent abuse and neurodivergence
• the relationship between trauma and children’s abusive behaviour.

Restrictions on space, movement and personal freedom

Research has shown that mothers in particular experience serious restrictions to their freedom due to abuse (Haw, 2010, Baker and Bonick, 2021). Some report hiding from their children or avoiding being in their homes. They also report having difficulties maintaining relationships outside of the home due to stigma and embarrassment. In some cases, their children may also prevent them from going out and socialising by physically stopping them from leaving (Haw, 2010).

Material and financial consequences

Destruction of property is common in child to parent abuse. Parents may also experience other financial consequences, such as paying fines for damages or poor school attendance, loss of income through work absences, or money demanded by children as part of the abuse (Cottrell, 2001; Simmons et al., 2018). Some parents, mothers in particular, reported having to give up work because they were either too affected by the abuse or felt they needed to spend more time with their child (Cottrell, 2001).

Legal consequences

Child to parent abuse may result in criminal justice involvement with consequences for the parents who are being abused. Some parents report experiencing legal issues as a result of their child’s poor school attendance, conflict with social services, and false accusations of child abuse. They may also be issued parenting orders, which can include mandatory attendance at parenting programmes that can negatively impact on their ability to work (Cottrell, 2001). 

It’s also worth exploring how ethics of care can amplify the harms of child to parent abuse towards mothers. Many feminist theorists have argued that women are socialised into caring roles where they’re expected to prioritise other people’s well-being over their own (Hays, 1996; Burman, 2008). When mothers are experiencing abuse, they can become particularly vulnerable, and it can be especially hard for them to reach out for support. Holt (2024) found that mothers who experienced abuse from their neurodivergent children tended to see it as an expression of their children feeling ‘safe’ around them. They talked about providing a ‘safe space’ for their children to process their emotions through violence. They also reported having this interpretation reinforced by others who praised them for their close relationship with their child. 

Mothers also reported finding it extremely difficult to support their children after a violent episode. They described taking care of their children’s emotional needs while not being able to process their own. According to Holt (2024), the mothers often felt their responsibility for their children’s well-being outweighed their own feelings in response to the abuse. 

Holt (2024) makes clear that ethics of care is a useful framework for understanding violence and abuse from children who are often acting out of extreme distress themselves. And it offers us a way to support victims of abuse without criminalising children and young people. However, it’s important to balance ethics of care towards children who abuse their parents with the parents’ well-being. This means that support needs to be in place for parents dealing with abusive behaviour from their children that focusses on the well-being of the whole family. 

Trauma and abuse

Research has found that some children who have experienced or witnessed domestic violence go on to behave abusively towards their parents in adolescence. This is particularly pronounced in the violence of sons towards their mothers (Holt, 2022). Research looking at child to parent violence reported to the police found some children and young people showed escalating violence from a young age. There’s some evidence that this may be particularly true for young people who have experienced trauma early in life (Holt, 2022; Selwyn and Meakings, 2016).

In a study about children’s violence and aggression toward their parents, Victoria Baker (2021) carried out an online survey and in-depth interviews with 14 to 18 year olds. Ten per cent of the 211 survey respondents, and all 21 of the interviewees, reported having engaged in abusive behaviour against their parents. 

Over half of the young people who had reported being abusive towards their parents described having experienced different forms of violence and trauma in the past. This included domestic violence but also violence they had experienced from their peers. Some of the respondents described difficulties in emotional regulation. For example, relatively minor frustrations could lead to them becoming upset and unable to calm themselves down. 

Baker suggests that young people who have experienced trauma can have “overactive threat appraisal”. This means that past experiences make it difficult for them to judge present threats accurately. Things that might not register as meaningful threats or provocations to others can cause intense emotions and reactions in young people who have experienced trauma as a result of this overactive sense of threat detection (Baker, 2021). 

Victoria Baker also argues that young people who have been traumatised might experience more anger than other young people. This is because anger can be more easily accessed than other, more complicated, emotions they may be feeling as a result of their experiences (Baker, 2021). 

However, Helen Baker (2012a, 2012b) cautions against oversimplifying a “cycle of violence” narrative, in which boys who have witnessed their father being violent inevitably grow up to be violent themselves. She argues instead that practitioners need to be open to the complexities of how children react to trauma. She warns specifically against labelling young men or adolescent boys prematurely as violent instead of trying to understand behaviours that may result from extreme distress. 

Helen Baker also notes that aggressive or violent behaviour in these contexts could be adopted as a means to protect themselves rather than to control or threaten others (2012b). This warning reflects some of the findings from Victoria Baker’s 2021 study. Several of the young people in that study described having been violent towards parents and step parents as a form of self-defence.

More information on working with people who have experienced trauma can be found in our evidence summary on trauma-informed approaches.

There are a number of specific approaches and specific programs that address child to parent abuse. An overview of the most commonly used approaches can be found in Baker and Bonnick (2021). The researchers found that the most promising approaches to addressing child to parent abuse tend to have some elements in common. 

They note that for parents, it’s often important to name and acknowledge abuse and to be empowered to manage conflict and boundaries. For young people, research suggests that important factors include learning about managing the triggers for abuse, developing communication skills, self-reflection, and acknowledging harms. All these different approaches tend to focus on principles of solution-based and strength-based approaches, restorative justice, and supporting positive behaviours (Baker and Bonnick, 2021).