Adult children of elderly parents who remarry: aetiology of domestic abuse

This research paper from Israel examines damaging family reactions to later-life remarriage. It describes a study based on qualitative data from interviews with 17 children of elderly parents who had remarried and later reported their adult children to the social service agencies as abusers. An analysis of the interviews shows that the main cause of the abuse was financial and involved matters of inheritance, wills and the distribution of assets. The dynamics which lay behind this pattern of family behaviour are explored.