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This book combines the approaches of history and criminology to study parricide and non-fatal violence against parents from across traditional period and geographical boundaries, encompassing research on Asia as well as Europe and North America. Parricide and non-fatal violence against parents are rare but significant forms of family violence. They have been perceived to be a recent phenomenon related to bad parenting and child abuse often in poorer socioeconomic circumstances - yet they have a history, which provides insights for modern-day explanation and intervention. Research on violence against parents has concentrated on child abuse and mental illness but, by using a rich array of primary and secondary documents, such as court cases, criminal statistics, newspaper reports, and legal and medical literature, this book shows that violence against parents is also shaped by conflicts related to parental authority, the rise of children's rights, conflicting economic and emotional expectations, and other sociohistorical factors.
List of contents
Introduction; Marianna Muravyeva and Raisa Toivo.- PART 1: NORMATIVE CONCEPTS AND FAMILY AUTHORITY.- 'What Kind of Monster or Beast are You?' Parricide and Patricide in Roman Law and Society; Barbara Biscotti.- 'A timely warning to rash and disobedient children': Normative Literature and Violence against Parents in England, 1600-1800; Jim Sharpe.- Degeneracy and Abuse: Attitudes to Violence against Parents in Nineteenth-Century Russia.- PART 2: HISTORICISING VIOLENCE AGAINST PARENTS: LOCALITIES AND IDENTITIES.- 'You would have them lock me up and sell me as slave': Parents and Children in Eighteenth-Century Wallachia; Constanta Vintila-Ghitulescu.- From Confession to Declaration: Parricide in Scotland, 1660 to 1830; Katie Barclay.- Unimaginable Crime and Imaginary Criminals: The Thorvald Sletten Matricide Case, 1899-1907; Silje Warberg.- Gender and the Historicity of Parricide: A Case Study from the Nineteenth-Century North American West; Peter Boag.- PART 3: STRUGGLING WITH PARENTAL AUTHORITY IN EARLY MODERN AND MODERN SOCIETIES.- Ambivalent Fatherhood: On Disobedience and Assaults against Parental Authority in Munich in the Early Seventeenth Century; Satu Lidman.- Parricide in nineteenth-century Finland: Cultures of Violence and a Crisis of Authority; Raisa Maria Toivo.- 'His Disobedient Son': Sami Narratives of Parental Authority in Eighteenth-Century Finnmark; Liv Helene Willumsen.- Conclusion; Marianna Muravyeva and Raisa Maria Toivo.- Index
About the author
Raisa Maria Toivo is Academy Research Fellow at the University of Tampere, Finland. She works on the history of gender, violence and witchcraft and religion. Her publications include
Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Society (2008) and
Faith and Magic in Early Modern Finland (2016).
Marianna Muravyeva is Professor of Law at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia. She works on gender equality, legal theory, history of law, criminology and gender-based violence. Her publications include
Domestic Disturbances, Patriarchal Values: Violence, Family and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe (2015),
Women's History in Russia: (Re)Establishing the Field (2014) and
Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2012).
Summary
This book combines the approaches of history and criminology to study parricide and non-fatal violence against parents from across traditional period and geographical boundaries, encompassing research on Asia as well as Europe and North America. Parricide and non-fatal violence against parents are rare but significant forms of family violence. They have been perceived to be a recent phenomenon related to bad parenting and child abuse often in poorer socioeconomic circumstances – yet they have a history, which provides insights for modern-day explanation and intervention. Research on violence against parents has concentrated on child abuse and mental illness but, by using a rich array of primary and secondary documents, such as court cases, criminal statistics, newspaper reports, and legal and medical literature, this book shows that violence against parents is also shaped by conflicts related to parental authority, the rise of children’s rights, conflicting economic and emotional expectations, and other sociohistorical factors.
