'It's ruined me being a mother': mothers' experiences of abuse by their adult children

This thesis explores the experiences of mothers abused by their now adult children. This includes how mothers articulate their experiences of abuse in their various forms and manifestations, their journeys of help-seeking and the barriers they faced in doing so, and their perceptions of effective support. It is the first research project specifically investigating the abuse of parents (and mothers in particular) by adult children in England and Wales.

Inspired by the life story interview method, I conducted unstructured in-depth interviews with eleven mothers in which they told stories about their relationships with their now adult children and the impacts of their children’s abusive behaviours. Informed by narrative analysis, in particular a dialogic/performative approach, I attended to mothers’ narrative resources in the identity-shaping process of storytelling and the ways they used language performatively to tell their stories of survival.

Mothers’ narratives revealed deeply gendered experiences of filial abuse shaped by interconnectedness: the progression of their children’s abusive behaviours crossed boundaries between ‘adolescents’ and ‘adults’; mothers often articulated their experiences of the abuse in a visceral, almost physical way, as an attack against the connectedness and intimacy of the mother-child relationship, further complicated by their maternal caring burden; and their enduring commitment to the maternal role informed their help-seeking efforts, against enormous institutional barriers within a wider context of male violence against women, gendered inequalities, and institutionalised sexism and misogyny.

Their accounts show that effective support for mothers experiencing filial abuse should take into account these various dimensions of interconnectedness. By giving voice to a neglected group of victims within several overlapping areas of scholarship (child to parent abuse, domestic abuse, and elder abuse) and highlighting their gendered experiences, this research project makes an important contribution to knowledge. Crucially, the research findings confirm the importance of a life course approach to studying and understanding parents’ experiences of filial abuse.