Gender Perspective in Research on Child-to-Parent Violence: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Propose Child-to-parent violence (CPV) is an increasing issue affecting many families and has been examined from variousapproaches. However, the explicit incorporation of a gender perspective, which is crucial for understanding power dynamicsand social roles within violence, remains limited and fragmented in existing research. This scoping review was conductedto address this gap by providing a comprehensive analysis of how the gender perspective is integrated into CPV studies. Indoing so, the aim was to enhance current knowledge and guide more effective, gender-sensitive interventions in this field.Methods Studies from 2010 to 2025 were reviewed through the following databases: Scopus, Web of Science, Dialnet Plusand PsycInfo.Results A total of eighty-two studies was included. Most of the sample came from Spanish studies, with community sam-ples, focusing on adolescents as informants. Concerning the approaches to gender integration, results show that most studieshave focused on an approach to gender mostly incorporating sex differences in the type of violence, frequency and in psy-chological characteristics. Followed by the gender-specific modeling approach, in which studies have focused on includingseparate models for mothers/fathers, or daughters/son, while also including gender as a predictor or having an interactioneffect with other predictive factors. Most studies have included either the aggressor’s gender or both the category mother/father, son/daughter. The least frequent studies were those approaching norms and gender roles explicitly.Conclusion The results suggest the need that research on CPV incorporate designs that explicitly allow a gender aproachbeyond sociodemographic characteristics as to provide rigorous analyses that make structural inequalities visible, recognizedifferential patterns of aggression and victimization, and design interventions that are better suited to the complexity of thephenomenon.