How can a parent let their child be beaten by an OH

Here

"I agree with both of those posts saf.

Shows hoe deeply ingrained these ideas are that it didn't occur to me to ask where Ithaka's father was in all of this. Of course he may have moved heaven and earth but the point is people just don't imagine that men will step up when it comes to children, that's why that question is so rarely asked."

From miles up the thread.

Because you gave an example of a situation on the thread. In situations like yours, in society and in the media, people do not tend to look to the fathers. They just don't. It is there in the news every day.

SardineQueenSun 05-Feb-12 15:25:34

"But it's not asked of fathers, in situations like ithaka was in. It is down teh mother mother to sort it all out, no-one looks towards the father'."

LIKE in situations LIKE. Obviously I don't know about your personal situation, but when bad things happen to children people always ask where the mother was, not where the father was.

Well, that is nothing LIKE my situation, where I moved in with my father. So why use my name/situation when it is nothing LIKE a situation when a father doesn't step up to plate? Because you made an assumption about my situation (that my dad was useless) that fitted with your world view which is incorrect.

1 in 3 is a shocking statistic and shows that schools are doing little to stop this, and may even be promoting it.

And stuff you Nadine Dorries.

SQ, I haven't read the whole thread as its topic is just too close to home. I think you made a strong point that people who don't believe in systemic oppression of women in our society focus on women's actions when anything goes wrong.

I can offer a view on your last paragraph from my own experience. What makes some men abuse women and children? The fact that they were abused. It becomes part of your world-view; just a thing that men do. It should be obvious that this goes deep into the psyche: the accepting child, witnessing and suffering abuse, learns that such is the normal run of life. This can be so hard to shift in adulthood that abusers literally don't hear what others say about living without abuse. To them, it is impossible.

What made my mother tolerate my father's violence? Brainwashing, yes, "learned helplessness" and this ability to deny what doesn't fit the template. Even today, years after his death, she idolises my father while recognising the harm he did. She holds two different realities in her mind - they're incompatible, but she never attempts to reconcile them. Splitting is a well-known psychological reaction to emotional torment. It makes the intolerable acceptable.

When both my sister and I went on to relationships with violent men, her advice focussed on love and the desirability of keeping a marriage together. She didn't really register that we were in pain: she couldn't, because that would mean tearing down her complicated, self-protective, cognitive structure. I've discussed all this with her, but never ask her to see the reality as I see it; that would be unforgivably cruel.

I don't know how you would address this syndrome if dealing with abusive parents face-to-face. I can see a strong argument for removing the children - before they've fully internalised an abusive life template - but it would be nicer to find ways of normalising the parents' perceptions.

FGS.

A third of girls are sexually assaulted at school and you're more worried about "sweeping generalisations" to do with PHSE and discipline?

Sweeping generalisations are merited in this case.

If they weren't a third of all secondary school girls would not be sexually assaulted at school

Thank Maude my daughters went to an all girls school, as did I.

In the boy's school my son is going to in Sept they have a year 11 room with a TV that has music videos on and, yes, it shows scantily clad women objectified.

Most young boys have seen their first pornographic movie by 11. And it's not the 'good' stuff either.

I wasn't referring to the statistic about sexual assault which - if true (link?) - is of course a huge problem. I was referring to what must be, if you are indeed talking about more than one school, the sweeping generalisations about discipline policies and PSHE curriculums.

The serious debate and reporting about Nadine Dorries plans to introduce a message of abstinence in schools for girls only, shows something about this area, surely? The fact that she felt able to propose it in the first place, and people in the media and on here debated it very seriously. How did that even happen?

I think this is getting into some tricky territory because there are some on the thread who see systemic oppression of women in our society and some who don't, and those people are never going to see eye to eye.

It's always the people who don't believe in systemic oppression of women in our society who focus on women's actions when anything goes wrong as well.

If people opened their eyes they would be asking what make some men abuse children, why they get away with it, what can be done. But that's not as interesting or relevant, apparently, as finding a woman in the picture somewhere and saying it's all her fault.

"But it's not asked of fathers, in situations like ithaka was in. It is down teh mother mother to sort it all out, no-one looks towards the father'."

LIKE in situations LIKE. Obviously I don't know about your personal situation, but when bad things happen to children people always ask where the mother was, not where the father was.

You must know this, surely, from reading the papers and threads on here?

It's not one school.

If it were, one third of all secondary school aged girls would not have been sexually assaulted.

You can pretend all you like that there isn't a problem.

But I believe that 1/3 of all secondary school aged girls being sexually assaulted in our schools, is a problem. If you don't see it as a major problem, that's your choice, but I disagree with you.

BasilRathbone - I don't know which school you work in/have been observing lessons in (must be one or the other, given the detailed level of knowledge you appear to have about what appears to be happening in at least one school) but what leads you to think that what happens in this one school is widespread across the UK?

Certainly in the school I teach in, all of the situations you mention would result in vigorous investigation by the SMT resulting in disciplinary consequences.

And our PSHE curriculum bears no relation to the one you describe. Perhaps you need to take it up with the school concerned since it seems to have some very outdated policies.

It's not officially condoned, no.

But it's not punished.

Just like Domestic Violence.

If it were punished, there would be a lot more exclusions from school.

And a third of all girls would not have sexual assault to look forward to as a fairly standard part of their school lives.

This survey?
news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_7811000/7811468.stm

'But it's not asked of fathers, in situations like ithaka was in. It is down teh mother mother to sort it all out, no-one looks towards the father'.

You know nothing about my situation except a few scant details I posted which you have used to make an incorrect and baseless assumption.

I actually moved in with my father (and his lovely wife). Sorry, that doesn't fit in with your argument, but that is facts for you.

'And in sex education lessons, PHSE, etc., rape myths are still being perpetrated. Bullshit like girls leading boys on and therefore inviiting rape, is still being tolerated without proper challenge.'

Any school who is teaching a PSHCE curriculum based on those attitudes is failing its pupils and would be failed by OFSTED.

All schools have a disciplinary and behaviour policy that includes responses to sexual harassment. If it is reported, then it must be followed through by the adults involved in implementing the policy.
If my DS groped or verbally abused a girl at school, he'd have been facing disciplinary consequences, as several of the boys did in his Y9 and 10 year groups.
The fact that it happens is not in question, but it is not condoned in schools.

And in sex education lessons, PHSE, etc., rape myths are still being perpetrated. Bullshit like girls leading boys on and therefore inviiting rape, is still being tolerated without proper challenge. Boys are still being taught that "consent" to sex means girls not saying no, rather than girls actively participating in sex.

Most anti bullying policies still don't even recognise sexual bullying as being something which exists. Where it happens, it's not dealt with. The terms "slag" "slapper" "slut" etc., are freely used in secondary schools where the term "nigger" would result in an exclusion. Boys send girls porn on their phones and it's ignored. They post sexually abusive stuff about them on Facebook and their school pretends it's nothing to do with them - even though the only reason the boy knows the girl well enough to do that, is because they sit in the same classroom.

Our education system has miles to go, to educate girls to expect respect and decency from men and to educate boys that respect and decency, is normal and not "pussy-whipped" or "gay" (dealing with homophobia can also be a bit ropey).

My mother was one of these parents.

My stepfather punched my sister in the face when she was 13, knocking her unconscious. My mum was with him for 20 years.

Er, actually a survey carried out last year revealed that a third of all secondary school girls had been sexually assaulted at school.

I think that gives us some indication of the seriousness with which our education establishments take the issue of female dignity and equality.

Where in our education system do we teach boys to be aggressive bastards and girls to bend over and take it?
It's never been in any curriculum, policy statement, code of behaviour or establishment I've ever worked in. On the contrary, there has been a huge amount of input on supporting both sexes towards equality of opportunity and access.
Perhaps we should limit breeding and parenting to approved cohorts that have passed rigorous testing? No BYB?

I think most people know the answer and the answers are given on the thread. Most women do leave or protect their children. Some for various reasons can't.

Here is a video a girl put up on youtube recently of her father's conduct. The mother says now - 5 years later that she felt unble to object. She seems very complicit in it on the video

"The OP is about why people, women sepcifically, marry, support and enable bastards and I find that an interesting issue and one that is seldom debated."

I disagree that it is seldom debated.

It is far more often debated, fruitlessly, than the more aposite and necessary question, "why do men abuse women and / or children and how comes they get away with it most of the time?"

I've got nothing to add to the already excellently explained reasons.

If you want to stop women marrying, supporting and enabling bastards, then you have to stop our education system, legal system and culture in general supporting and enabling men to be bastards.

Then these women wouldn't be able to marry, support or enable them, because a) there would be far fewer of them to go round and b) women wouldn't have been educated to accept their behaviour as tolerable.

But it's not asked of fathers, in situations like ithaka was in. It is down teh mother mother to sort it all out, no-one looks towards the father.

How could people do that? Well I don't know , there have been lots of suggestions and reasons given on the thread as to why it happens.

I find it harder to understand how someone can hurt a child in the first place. Again, that is surely the worse crime?

How could anyone stand by and allow the abuse of a child to go unchallenged? Especially a parent?
How could they not want to have the abuser punished and removed from any contact with the child ever again? How could they think a child might deserve it? How can they not want to see a time when abuse of a child is as unthinkable as eating them.
Sod this focus on it being the mother, I'd be asking the same thing of any of the adults sharing the house or in regular contact with the child.