Why Focus On The Familial?

The thought of mothers being abused or killed by their own children – the people they have carried, cared for and nurtured since birth – is something of an underexamined and almost taboo issue in Britain. There is a slowly growing body of research into why children under 18 use violent behaviour towards their parents. There is an even smaller body of research showing why adults – nearly all of them sons – do the same.

Is it because they can get away with it? Or is it because we take the threat from the mentally ill less seriously even than we do the threat from dangerous dogs? 

“It is still incredibly hidden, very taboo,” said Prof Rachel Condry, who along with Dr Caroline Miles has been researching violence towards parents for 15 years. “When we started, practitioners and police officers knew about the problem and had to deal with it, but it wasn’t something that was named, or really talked about. Over the years it has become more of a familiar, known problem, but so much is still hidden.”

But the 'Guardian's' keeping count: 

The Guardian’s Killed women count project, which documented every woman allegedly killed by a man in 2024, identified at least seven cases of mothers alleged to have been killed by their sons. A new Femicide Census report puts the figure at 173 over the last 15 years. Some of the key drivers are clear. Issues around lack of housing, substance misuse and, most often of all, mental health problems are key factors behind many of the tragic stories of the women killed by their offspring.

I think I can guess which of those is the real driver.  

Prof Amanda Holt, the chair of criminology at the University of Roehampton who completed the first national analysis of parricide (the killing of a parent) in England and Wales, said a failure to consider parents as potential victims was leaving people vulnerable. “There’s so little understanding around violence towards parents it’s harder for practitioners to know what the red flags are,” she said. “They tend to see parents as carers, not as potential victims. I think a lot of services are just thinking, thank God there’s someone for this person.”

'Someone for this person to murder instead of us' might be more accurate.