Elder abuse is strongly associated with stress and frustration of the caregiver, particularly stressors brought about by the elderly person's increasing age and continual presence at home. In violent families, battered wives and their abusive husbands are under considerable stress from multiple sources. At the same time, they are deficient in coping skills that could buffer the impact of these stresses. This deficiency promotes violent control of the social and physical environment. Motives behind marital rape may be slightly different than violence toward spouses, but marital rape also demonstrates power and anger on the part of the husband which may result from stressful problems associated with his own sexuality. Family violence should be viewed as a whole and not merely as the sum of its individual categories. This view will facilitate understanding of the intergenerational pattern of family violence and render it less resistant to intervention attempts. At the present time, family violence is protected by societal norms supporting the family's sanctity and privacy. Rather than condemn all violent acts, the law and social policies attempt to discriminate between socially acceptable normal violence and unacceptable abusive violence. This dichotomy has confounded most attempts to deal with the pervasive problem of elder and spouse abuse. 204 references, 5 tables, 1 figure.