"DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AS A FUNCTION OF AGE"
There is considerable evidence that the rate of domestic violence decreases as couple’s age. Clearly young men and women are more physically aggressive. However, there is also evidence that the percentage and severity of violence perpetrated by women increases with age in couples that do fight.
A 1988 study by Pillemer and Finkelhor found that in elderly couples wives were more than twice as likely to assault their husband than vice versa. Similar results from Stets and Straus 1989 are shown in Table 9‘
The effect is particularly dramatic for cohabitating women going through the change of life in their late forties. Two-thirds of the domestic violence in cohabitating couples aged 45+ was found to be solely female against male in the Stets and Straus 1989 survey (Table 9). Except for cohabiting couples in the 25-44 age group, female only violence is consistently higher than male only violence. That is particularly true for young couples in the 18-24 age group.
Mutual combat is most common in younger couples accounting for about 60% of the reported violence in the 18-24 age group and steadily diminishing to less than 40% for the 45+ age group (Table 9).
"Domestic violence from both sides of the fence edition #2." Lulu.com. p. 142. ISBN 978-1-4357-1236-2.