“I Knew Exactly How to Break Her”: Accounting for Child-to-parent Abuse in the Context of Men’s Violence in the Home

Abstract

Purpose Child-to-parent abuse (CPA) is an under-recognized form of family violence that, a number of scholars note, occurs in the context of experiences of adult-perpetrated family violence (APFV). This article examines how those with intimate experiences of CPA attribute its manifestation to fathers’ violence towards children and mothers. Methods Through a feminist philosophical lens combined with attribution theory, this article analyses two types of qualitative data. The first is interviews with family members who have experienced CPA (n = 12), and interviews and focus groups with practitioners who work in this field (n = 20). The second type of data collected was online anonymous messag..