NCJ Number
74756
Date Published
1980
Length
11 pages
Annotation
Drawing upon the findings of a partially completed study, the director of the Department of Individual and Family Studies of the University of Delaware testified before the joint congressional hearings on elder abuse, focusing on the dilemmas of patients and care givers which often result in abuse.
Abstract
This witness described an elderly woman doubly victimized by her daughter's abuse and by her own feelings of guilt and shame at having raised such a child. Elderly women themselves, to whom the task of caring for older relatives is often entrusted, are burdened with total care of a very old parent while worrying about the likelihood of soon needing their own care arrangements. Another dilemma involves double-direction violence, which occurs when authoritarian parents verbally and often physically abuse their care giving children who are often elderly and frail themselves. Care givers who must care simultaneously for college-age children and aged parents face the double-demands dilemma, with financial resources often unbearably stretched beyond capacity and their physical and emotional strength draining in two opposite directions. Abusive and neglectful methods of control become methods of last resort in the face of conflicting demands. Moreover, some victimized elderly persons abused those same children upon whom they are now dependent. A glossary of terms used in this testimony, tabular data on elder abuse, and a list of 51 references are appended.