Intimate Violence Across the Lifespan ― Interpersonal, Familial, and Cross-generational Perspectives

Evidence pertaining to continual violence throughout the life cycle coupled with the experience of growing old in a life permeated by intimate violence is scarce. And the focus is usually on the victims - usually, the older, battered women - and seldom on their aging partners or adult children who were part and parcel of the violent dynamics in the family system. With the increase in longevity and the older population’s subsequent growth in size, the number of elderly couples living and aging in long-lasting conflictive relationships is on the rise.

The relatively intense preoccupation with elder abuse in the gerontological literature in recent years has not specifically addressed long-term intimate violence among the old adults and its lasting consequences. Similarly, the literature on intimate intergenerational relationships in old age has usually focused on normative exchanges between partners and their extended family, including their adult children. Therefore, conflictive relationships, and particularly violent ones, have also fallen outside the scope of this body of research. This volume describes and analyzes the various perspectives of family members concerning life, and particularly old age, in the shadow of long-term intimate violence. It explores how people make sense out of living and aging in violence, how interpersonal, familial and cross-generational relationships are perceived and reconstructed and how “we-ness” is achieved, if at all, in such families.

Tova Band-Winterstein is an assistant professor of gerontology and nursing at the University of Haifa, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences and a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Ageing. Her career combines ongoing involvement in clinical practice and supervision with applied research in the field of gerontology and intimate partner violence across the lifespan. She funded the Unit of Elder Abuse at the Haifa Municipality and conducted with colleagues the First National Elder Abuse and Neglect study in Israel. The results of this survey had a significant impact on changing the welfare and financial establishment’s attitudes toward elder abuse and neglect. She acquired national and international reputation though her work as consultant for policy and practice model development. Since her Ph.D. dissertation dealing with the phenomenology of elder abuse and throughout the lifespan, her writing expresses the much-needed insider’s view of elder abuse by giving voice to the old persons who experience it. She published a book on the topic in Hebrew in 2008 and several articles published by professional journals in the field of elder abuse and intimate partner violence.

Zvi Eisikovits is a professor of social welfare at the University of Haifa School of Social Work and director of the Center for the Study of Society. Zvi is Israel’s leading expert in research on intimate partner violence. In recent years he led the First National Survey on Intimate Partner Violence in Israel and the First National Survey on Elder Abuse and Neglect and is presently conducting a national survey on child abuse and neglect. He established the Haifa Research Group on Intimate Partner Violence, which acquired a national and international reputation, and a research center he is currently heading. His publications include about 100 articles and 4 books on intimate partner violence and intervention with children and youths at risk. He conducted research in Israel, the United States, Germany, Thailand, Cyprus, and Eastern Europe and supervised a large number of doctoral students who presently serve as faculty members in Israeli and American Universities. He is the funding co-director of a national nonprofit organization called AMINUT established by academics, politicians and professionals to prevent violence. He serves on some editorial boards of journals such as Violence Against Women, Child and Youth Care Forum.