One-third of Young People Are Violent Toward Parents

The numbers arrived quietly, buried in years of questionnaires. At age 13, roughly 208 teenagers from Zurich admitted they’d hit, kicked or thrown something at their parents in the past year. Not once in a heated moment, but reported it on a form, in a research study, with researchers watching. By age 24, 56 were still doing it.

Laura Bechtiger wasn’t entirely surprised. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich’s Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, she’d spent years tracking the social development of over 1,500 young people from early adolescence into their twenties. But even she found the cumulative figure striking: one in three had been physically aggressive toward their parents at least once between ages 11 and 24.

“This problem spans all social classes,” Bechtiger says. “It’s not limited to any particular social background or gender.”

The behaviour peaks at 13, when about 15% of teenagers report aggressive incidents, then declines through late adolescence. But that drop-off isn’t as reassuring as it might sound. By early adulthood, roughly 5% are still lashing out, and those who remain violent at 24 show something worrying: their behaviour has become increasingly stable. Between ages 20 and 24, young people who reported aggression once were nearly 18 times more likely to report it again at the next assessment.

It’s a pattern Denis Ribeaud, co-director of the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood, recognises. “Conflicts between parents and adolescents are normal and even important for development,” he says. “Isolated outbursts during puberty should trigger reflection but are not necessarily cause for alarm.”

Then he adds the crucial qualifier: “If a pattern emerges, however, this is a red flag.”

The Zurich study, which published its findings in European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry this January, asked participants at ages 11, 13, 15, 17, 20 and 24 about two specific behaviours – hitting or kicking parents in anger, and throwing things at them in anger. That narrow definition means the true scope is almost certainly larger, since it excludes verbal abuse, threats and other forms of aggression.

What surprised researchers was not just the prevalence, but the ordinariness. These weren’t troubled teenagers from dysfunctional homes, at least not predominantly. Family income made no difference. Neither did parents’ education levels. Migration background showed no association. The behaviour cut across every demographic the researchers examined.

Lilly Shanahan, who directs the z-proso project alongside Manuel Eisner and Ribeaud, had expected some of that. “At first glance, it may seem surprising that one-third of adolescents become physically aggressive toward their parents at some point,” she says. “But these are mostly isolated incidents, likely in the midst of heated parent-child conflicts that occur during puberty. We’re not talking about systematic violence here, and it’s also not about individual failure.”

Yet the data revealed a subset that concerned her: two in five of those who’d been aggressive reported multiple episodes.

When the researchers dug into childhood risk factors, patterns emerged. Children with attention-deficit and hyperactivity symptoms were 26% more likely to become aggressive toward parents later on, possibly because of difficulties with impulse control. Those exposed to harsh parenting – physical punishment and verbal aggression – were 24% more likely. Witnessing disagreement and conflict between parents increased risk by 17%.

Serious victimisation outside the family mattered too. Children who’d experienced assault showed higher rates of later aggression toward parents, even after accounting for their general aggressive tendencies. The cycle of violence, it seems, doesn’t respect the boundary between home and world.

But the study also identified protective factors, which is where prevention efforts might focus. Young people who’d learned competent ways to cope with conflict and negative emotions were significantly less likely to become aggressive. So were those whose parents stayed involved in their lives, showed interest and offered emotional support.

The message from Eisner, a sociologist and co-director, is straightforward: “Prevention needs to be aimed at both parents and children. Parents should learn to rely less on corporal punishment and to create a supportive, constructive environment within the family. Children should also receive help to learn emotional regulation and constructive conflict resolution, even before they start school.”

That timing matters. The stability patterns suggest that by early adulthood, aggressive behaviour toward parents may be calcifying into something more permanent. The five per cent still violent at 24 aren’t just having bad days; they’re at risk of carrying these patterns into their own future families.

Ribeaud’s warning signs are specific: repeated physical aggression with increasing intensity, lack of remorse, and aggressive behaviour extending beyond the family. Any of these, he says, should prompt families to seek help.

The Zurich study benefits from unusually rich data – six assessments over 13 years, tracking the same individuals from early adolescence into young adulthood. That longitudinal view reveals something cross-sectional snapshots miss: the developmental arc of family violence, from its peak in early puberty through its persistence in a concerning minority.

Shanahan acknowledges the study’s limitations. Two items on a questionnaire can’t capture the full spectrum of youth-to-parent aggression. Self-reporting might underestimate prevalence, as some participants may have felt ashamed. And the study only measured physical aggression “in anger,” missing premeditated violence or emotional abuse.

But the findings challenge the common assumption that family violence flows in only one direction. They also puncture the notion that this behaviour is confined to troubled families or specific social classes. The aggression appears instead to be a feature of adolescent development itself, one that most young people move past but some do not.

What the numbers ultimately suggest is that roughly 60,000 families in Switzerland alone – extrapolating from Zurich’s population – have experienced physical aggression from their teenage or young adult children. Many will never report it. The shame runs both ways: children reluctant to admit they’ve struck their parents, parents unwilling to acknowledge their child’s violence.

The z-proso researchers argue their findings justify early intervention, before aggressive patterns harden. Teaching emotional regulation and conflict resolution in primary school, they suggest, could reduce the proportion of teenagers who resort to physical violence when family conflicts escalate during puberty.

For families already dealing with aggressive teenagers, Ribeaud’s framework offers guidance. Isolated incidents during puberty, he says, are cause for reflection. Patterns are cause for alarm. The distinction matters, not least because it resists the temptation to pathologise normal developmental turbulence whilst remaining vigilant for genuine red flags.

By age 24, most of the Zurich participants had moved past physical aggression toward their parents. But roughly one in twenty hadn’t, and for them, the odds of continuing the behaviour had grown considerably. Those young adults represent the sharp end of a much larger problem – one that remains taboo, under-reported and poorly understood, even as the data reveals its surprising prevalence.

Study link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00787-025-02953-w