'Over the years it has become more of a known problem, but so much is still hidden'

Issues around housing, substance misuse and mental health problems are behind many of the stories of the women killed by their offspring

- Jessica Murray

others being abused or killed by their own children - the people they have carried, cared for and nurtured since birth - is something of an underexamined and almost taboo issue in Britain.

There is a slowly growing body of research into why some children under 18 use violent behaviour towards their parents. There is an even smaller body of research showing why adults - nearly all of them sons - do the same.

"It is still incredibly hidden, very taboo," said Prof Rachel Condry, who along with Dr Caroline Miles has been researching violence towards parents for 15 years.

"When we started, practitioners and police officers knew about the problem and had to deal with it, but it wasn't something that was named, or really talked about. Over the years it has become more of a familiar, known problem, but so much is still hidden."

The Guardian's Killed women count project, which documented every woman allegedly killed by a man in 2024, identified at least seven cases of mothers who were alleged to have been killed by their sons. A new Femicide Census report puts the figure at 173 over the last 15 years.