We’re proud to have a range of experts on our board, including Thien Trang Nguyen Phan who has an incredible wealth of knowledge about Child to Parent Abuse.

As part of her doctoral studies, Thien Trang completed a thesis on parents who were being abused by their adult (over 18) children – which is now available to read online.

Please note, the content of the thesis could be triggering so please only read it if you feel able to – it includes many extracts of interviews with mothers detailing their abuse.

Explaining the focus of her research, Thien Trang said over 12 years of professional experience, she had been ‘increasingly troubled by the lack of research, knowledge base, and practice guidance and tools relating to abuse of parents by their adult children’.

This type of abuse had been included in the more general definition of domestic abuse until 2021, and she highlights the fact that most tools (such as DASH and MARAC) are geared towards intimate partner abuse – alongside specialist services being ‘better equipped’ at supporting younger victims.

The research sets out to answer three core questions:

• How do mothers articulate their experience of abuse by their adult children?

• What factors influence mothers’ help-seeking and access to support?

• What does effective support look like for mothers experiencing abuse from their adult children?

It’s worth noting that it wasn’t originally intended to be gender specific, but the 11 parents who came forward to bravely share their experiences with Thien Trang were all mothers, which is why the questions are geared towards female parents.

After sharing some of the abusive behaviours the mothers had detailed in their interviews with her, she goes on to say:

“Beyond the physical and emotional exhaustion, the constant walking on eggshells, and the costs to their health…mothers’ narratives revealed a consuming struggle for meaning in a world turned upside down. This struggle for meaning was deeply embedded in mothers’ experiences of the mother-child relationship.

“Indeed, for mothers, the abuse was not just an attack against them as persons, but fundamentally an attack against this relationship. Because of its unique nature, mothers articulated their experiences of the abuse in a visceral, almost physical way, as an attack against the connectedness and intimacy of the maternal bond. They were subsequently left with a sense of shock and repulsion as they saw their children turn against them and against their maternal bodies.

“Consequently, mothers experienced a triple stigma: the ‘double stigma’ of parenting a problematic child and of being a victim of domestic abuse…was further complicated by their ‘spoiled identities’ as mothers.”

As a result of her research, Thien Trang makes a number of recommendations for change at the end of her thesis. These include that the term ‘child to parent abuse’ should encompass adult offspring too, that professionals should be specifically trained in this type of abuse, that professionals recognise the mother-child relationship when dealing with this type of abuse, and that support should be flexible and take into account the nature of this relationship.

To read the full thesis, simply click here.