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.

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