Intimate Violence Across the Lifespan: Interpersonal, Familial and Cross Generational Perspectives

Published date12 December 2016
Date12 December 2016
Pages353-354
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JAP-06-2016-0012
AuthorMala Kapur Shankardass
Intimate Violence
Across the Lifespan:
Interpersonal,
Familial and Cross
Generational
Perspectives
By Tova Band-Winterstein and
Eisikovits Zvi
Springer Science+Business Media
New York, NY
2014
Review DOI
10.1108/JAP-06-2016-0012
This volume, the result of 12 years of
work, contributes to the growing
research literature on understanding
dimensions of elder abuse across
countries. But it also provides a much
needed extra dimension. It provides an
additional emphasis, generally missing in
emerging studies, that of describing
within intimate violence the situation of
aging partners and adult children, who
besides the victims of abuse and
violence are part of the dynamics of
interpersonal and cross-generational
relationships. Intimate partner violence,
or domestic abuse, is still a field not
properly understood in terms of its
causes, forms, incidence and
prevalence rates, prevention and
management, yet it persists in all
societies and is replicated across
generations. The book makes
useful contribution through a
phenomenological approach with
extensive use of interview data in
discussing the occurrence of violence in
families by abusers and impact on
victims as they age. It notes how intimate
violence among adults affects children
and their later lives as adults in the roles
of married partner and as a parent.
The authors portray intimate partner
violence as a process rather than
as a one off static occurrence.
The strength of the book also lies in
providing information on interventions
that help victims deal with their lives,
build resilience, manage relationships,
and survival. Reading this volume
would be beneficial to researchers,
clinicians, and other professionals
across disciplines.
The Foreword, by Simon Biggs, rightly
puts the book in the context of an ageing
world where soon the number of older
people will be of the same proportion as
the young and where older adults may
be at greater risk of violence and abuse
because of the population size and the
changing dynamics of interpersonal
relationships. Understanding of families
and intimate relationships requires more
ground-breaking research as we notice
increasing intergenerational conflict yet
at the same time more solidarity within
families and between family members
as people age and often face situations
when the two coexist in providing
different facets to relationships
at different points of time. Tova
Band-Winterstein and Zvi Eisikovitis with
their primary research conducted with
battered women, battering men, their
adult children who grew up in violence
and with older couples and individuals
who aged in violence, provide evidence
of how people live and deal with
violence. As people age, a new set of
strategies may come into play which are
depicted in this volume as coping
mechanisms and which reveal the
dynamics of relationships between the
victims and the perpetrators of intimate
violence in later life.
With its emphasis on empirical and
theoretical orientations, the book
provides a world view with cross-
generational perspectives necessary for
understanding the persisting and
growing incidence of intimate violence
and domestic abuse across the lifespan.
Old age brings with it certain specific
aspects of intimate partner violence,
which have been described in the book
and concern is appropriately in the
context of the self, couplehood,
parenthood and intergenerational
relations(p. 3). As pointed out in various
chapters older women use various
strategies to build a life-long adaptive
process to perpetuate the relationship
with the partner and children and these
are shaped by age, norms and various
VOL. 18 NO. 6 2016, pp. 353-354, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1466-8203
j
THE JOURNAL OF ADULT PROTECTION
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PAG E 35 3
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