Gregory Routt and Lily Anderson: Adolescent Violence in the Home: Restorative Approaches to Building Healthy, Respectful Family Relationships

Abstract

Adolescent Violence in the Home: Restorative Approaches to Building Healthy, Respectful Family Relationships, by Gregory Routt and Lily Anderson discusses a form of family violence that has been recognized as a major issue for decades but that has constantly been ignored by society. Routt and Anderson illustrate the elements of adolescent violence towards their parents, a form of abuse that is not often discussed. The adolescent period of life is a time of growth and development that can fluctuate often, and sometimes develop violent and abusive behaviors. Whether it is a result of poor parenting, traumatic life events, or mental disorders, adolescent violence in the home towards parents, siblings, and parental figures can cause severe emotional and physical distress in a family. Parents who are victims of abuse tend to keep the issue quiet, due to embarrassment, or they blame themselves for contributing to their child’s violent characteristics. The authors emphasize the lack of attention that this form of family violence receives, and throughout the text offer specified intervention methods to try and remedy adolescent violence towards their parents. Routt and Anderson offer an eye-opening text that recognizes the severity of parental abuse by their children, and aims to inform readers about how to identify, accept, and solve this issue while restoring more effective familial relationships. In chapter one, Routt and Anderson address the different types of pathways adolescents can take on the way to violent actions toward their parents, the reality and relevance of parental abuse, and its relationship with other types of family violence. There is a multitude of pathways adolescents can take to result in physically and emotionally abusing their parents: social, environmental, and genetic factors all playing a part. Statistics collected to understand the extent to which parental abuse from adolescents occurs, prove to be unreliable, as they do not include abuse other than physical acts. They also fail to record many instances because parents often refuse to report out of embarrassment and fear of social disapproval. This makes it difficult to understand the true scope that this type of violence reaches. Even those who are familiar with family violence frequently fail to accept the relevance of adolescent violence towards parents, usually due to the fluctuation of behaviors present in developing adolescents. The authors emphasize that this kind of abuse is not like other domestic violence; it is its own entity. While it is similar to partner abuse in the fight for power, it is a different spectrum emotionally, socially, economically, and culturally. For many decades, studies failed to recognize the reality of adolescent violence towards parents but, particularly in the past 15 years, more evidence has provided more solid results that this form of violence even is international. Overall, this chapter provides the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the infrastructure of parental abuse from children. The second chapter focuses on the role that physical abuse plays in this type of family violence. While physical violence can range from pinching to threats with deadly weapons, Routt and Anderson (2015, p. 18) simply define it as, ‘‘...any behavior that intended to physically hurt or harm that parent’’. It is illustrated that initial acts of violence from adolescents can result from a very wide variety of different social and environmental situations. Even though there have been very few cases where the violent adolescent actually kills their parents, or cause severe physical abuse that can result from domestic violence, it can lead the adolescent to face legal difficulties and & Lyndsay Leikem lleikem@indiana.edu