PROPOSAL FOR A DEFINITION OF FILIO-PARENTAL VIOLENCE: CONSENSUS OF THE SPANISH SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF FILIO-PARENTAL VIOLENCE (SEVIFIP)

Abstract

In recent years, many scholars and professionals from social, healthcare, educational and judicial fields have begun to pay increasing attention to filio-parental or child-to-parent violence (CPV). This emerging phenomenon, however, does not seem to have a consensuated definition in the relevant scientific literature. The confusion found around this concept, as well as the disparate results arising from different research projects, lead us to wonder whether they are all referring to the same problem. The aim of this paper is to establish clearly what child-to-parent violence is, and to provide as neutral and clear as possible a definition of the term, which will be useful and accessible to everyone interested in this problem. This definition may also play a significant role as a tool in future research and intervention proposals. After selecting the main definitions from those available in the specific literature, these were scrutinized and codified to find the categories relevant to the analysis, which were then debated by 11 experts in a discussion forum. As a result, we provide a precise and useful definition of CPV that has been phrased using language with a gender perspective.

Keywords

• Child-to-parent violence
• Definition; Research on CPV
• Exclusion criteria.