Filial Violence: An Unrevealed Problem for Decades

Abstract

While most domestic violence in Japan is likely assumed to be violence between intimate partners or toward a child, the most commonly occurring type of abuse in Japan is actually the violence from children to their parents. There are also extreme cases in which children kill their parents. Child-to-parent violence is a form of filial violence same as violence against same sex peers, dating partners, and siblings. Filial violence is any harmful act initiated by children to gain power and control over victims.

As the causes of child-to-parent violence are not well understood, there have been few studies on this type of family violence. In the media, it is often treated as a pathological symptom.

Four major findings are emerged on this chapter. They are as follows:

First, it is assumed that dealing with this type of violence as pathology is inappropriate and does not lead to any substantive understanding of the occurrence; rather, it should be treated from a viewpoint of life course. One of the main factors that drive children to extreme violence as a form of stress relief is that the children themselves have experienced similar violence in the past, either by receiving violence themselves or by witnessing violence within their household. Therefore, violence by children can be viewed as the result of interactions within household, including the parent-child relationship. Family is the most basic institute for intergenerational transmission of violence.

Second, violence by children is often concealed because parents try to protect their children, despite being the targets of the violence. On the other hand, modern Japanese family still contains element of hierarchal “ie” system especially for parent-to-child relationship. Therefore, parents hardly report child-initiated violence which is deviant to a community where the ie belongs. Violence by children can lead to a criticism toward the parents that their way of raising children was faulty. Due to these reasons, parents and children bear joint responsibility for the violence.

Third, as a specific comment on Japanese society, the responsibility of parents is excessively perceived or imposed by society. In many other countries, there are laws that prohibit child-to-parent violence, but in Japan, there is not a single law of that sort. Patriarchy and the group orientation of Japanese society may relate to this problem.

Finally, it can be expected that cases of violence by children will increase over time because the parent-child relationship is being extended recently. There are growing numbers of younger adults who live with their parents. Some of them are recognized as NEET (not in education, employment, or training). This is because they tend to remain unmarried. Additionally they are not able to earn an adequate income to sustain their own household and are dependent on their parents’ household. In analyzing these problems, Japanese unique sociocultural characteristic of “amae” (dependency) is focused. Furthermore, the necessity for factual investigation is addressed, especially for high-risk groups, such as hikikomori children including younger adults.