What Makes People Willing to Help Victims of Child-to-Parent Violence?

Background/Aim: Parents who endure child-to-parent violence (CPV) often experience social isolation and feel that their environment blames them for their suffering. However, the scientific literature has not yet addressed which elements facilitate the development of support networks for victims of CPV. This study aims to propose and empirically test the first theoretical model to explain the willingness to help victims of CPV. Method: To this end, 1,589 participants from the general population responded to an online questionnaire that measured social and personal norms regarding CPV, causal explanations of CPV, attribution of blame to the victim, sexist attitudes, and emotions toward the victim. Through structural equation modeling, we obtained a theoretically consistent model that presented a good fit to the data and explained 54% of the variance of the willingness to help. This model, consistent with previous models on antisocial and prosocial behavior, goes a step further in integrating psychosocial variables and theoretical approaches that had not been tested simultaneously in a single equation. Results: The findings indicate that sexist attitudes are related to victim blaming and that this blaming, together with social norms on CPV, are internalized to give rise to a personal norm based on which we morally judge the phenomenon, a personal sense of “right and wrong” that compels us to act to help victims of CPV. Conclusions: The results are discussed in relation to their practical implications for the design of awareness and prevention strategies aimed at increasing the social support that victims of CPV receive.