science

I'd imagine physical abuse ends once the child is big enough to fight back or move out. Verbal and emotional abuse are more insidious and the child may, in my experience, be deep into adulthood before they put an end to it.

It's easy to point at "my mom broke my arm for acting up" and see it as abuse, compared to "my mom told me my behavior is the reason I can't have friends over, so I only see my friends at school. For the last 5 years."

I'd also be curious to see a paper comparing the effects of different sorts of abuse.