[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Elder Abuse
Efforts to substantiate the existence of familial abuse of the elderly are, without question, elusive in the present, and unfathomable in the past. The extent of previous levels of conflict, even if researchers could agree on a single definition of the phenomenon, is unknown. Therefore, the most obvious question concerning the historical record--Is abuse today higher or lower than in the past?--cannot be answered. To be sure, historians have not explicitly inquired into elder abuse as a discrete subject, and while it may be possible, and perhaps even desirable, to try to improve our empirical knowledge of trends, we cannot expect real precision, even with the additional effort (Denzin, 1970).
Nevertheless, the considerable attention of late that historians have given to past conditions of old age has a bearing on present interest in the problem of familial conflict. The changing context and probable patterns of abuse do emerge, raising interesting questions about current trajectories. What is clear is that conflict is not a purely modern issue. Gerontological interest in history has too often been confined to a "tradition is good, modern is worse" contrast, which appears to apply to the subject of abuse. Thus we see respected and useful elders in pre-modern society standing above serious family squabbles in a rural world in which Biblical injunctions to honor one's parents had real meaning. But then modernity, serpent like, disrupted this Eden, robbed the elderly of their protective veneration, and increased their dependence on often-resentful younger kin.
The use of this type of modernization theory to explain changes in old age could present such a picture. The first point to establish, however, is that this use of history would result in serious distortions. Abuse certainly predates modernization in Western culture and may, in fact, have been more serious in the pre-modern past than in more recent times......
