To not understand how some people allow their dc to be raised in abusive homes?

[laptopscreen]

I really don’t understand it. I can kind of see why some people end up staying in abusive relationships without dc as they just make excuses over and over but with dc I do not understand how the dc aren’t more important than some crappy relationship.
I am genuinely wondering what happens here.Fwiw I was raised in this. And I’m still not understanding how on Earth you don’t put your dc first. Mumsnet seems to highlight this situation over and over again.

Can anyone help me understand? I’m nc Witt my mum now. I’m trying to process everything and tbh I haven’t forgiven my mum for allowing me and siblings to stay in the conditions we were in.

See and this is why really discussions such as these have no resolution.

There are so many variables and scenarios.
Even on this thread a mix and all jumbled up to be the same.

It is entirely possible that a parent is the victim of DV with none against the children in the family. Or a parent that is nt physically or mentally abused who stands by and allows their children to be abused. Or were both parents are abusive to each other and the children in the family.

Each scenario will impact on both your view of your parents and your childhood and were if any you place blame.

I kidded myself my son didn't know until he physically saw me being abused

My Dad stayed with my mum because that's what you did in those days. Who would have looked after us while he was at work? I'm sure he thought he was doing the best he could.

I used to pray he would divorce her.

I think children are an excuse to stay for too many people. They should be a reason to leave.

Maybe83. children are always affected by the abuse, even if the parents think they aren't. They pick up on so much, and no parent can be fully attentive to their children when they are walking on eggshells to avoid the abuse. Children see that too.

This is why Police always refer incidents of domestic violence to SS if there are children in the household.

My son is adopted he is one of five children whose birth mother could not put their needs first. Having said that she has been neglected herself and I think about her every day because I am grateful for my little boy. I feel sad that she lives with this heartache but her son is my most precious gift. We talk about her all the time.

Some women abuse their children by themselves when there is not even a man in the picture at all

This is very, very rare. Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violent crime, and carry out 98% of sexual abuse.

Not all abuse is either sexual or physically violent. Anecdotal but I've unfortunately come across many other people where the mother was the abusive parent. It's not exactly rare.

I certainly don’t want to dismiss your experience Ms. I’m sorry that happened to you.

As someone who was in a similar boat...

I have felt anger at my mum (she was the responsible caring adult who “failed” me) as she didn’t protect me but she did what she thought was best and she was a victim too.

Leaving an abuser is incredibly difficult, abusers seek out appropriate victims and my mother was a textbook case. she was basically a baby (19) and he was over 10 years older, she was gentle, smart, beautiful, funny and vivacious when she met my dad. She thought if she did enough to compensate it would all be okay. How she didn’t have a breakdown I’ll never know. She had a lifetime of misery and he robbed her of everything...

I don’t envy her and I have made peace with my childhood

I have a friend who tried to leave her abusive husband many times and eventually suceeded (with her 2 children).

I remember one of the times she told me about (this was before I met her). She was pregnant with her 2nd child and had gone to the women's refuge people who had offered her some accomodation but it was so far away that it would have meant her friend who was going to look after her son when she went into labour wouldn't have been able to do it. She was 38 weeks pregnant and didn't know what else to do so she went back to her husband

@TrainspottingWelsh I am aware of that you clearly haven't RTFT , because if you had, you would see that I have seen this from more than one perspective. Both as the child of an abusive mother, towards my DF and to my siblings and I, and as a wife of an abusive man (both pre and post DC) and I didn't actually realise the extent til after I had left that relationship. Sometimes the perpetrator gets 100% custody ... how is that better?

I left my abusive ex-husband five years ago when my kids were just 3 and 6. The consequence was he took me to court and I lost them for half of the time (50:50 custody). It's a huge price to pay for leaving.

raspberry I have, including your previous posts. I simply refuse to agree with the narrow minded view that the parent that isn't directly abusing the dc must always be a powerless victim, or one that did everything possible to protect their dc. Or the view that those of us that experienced otherwise don't understand the complexity of abuse.

As for 100% custody, personally I had nothing to lose. In fact, would have been easier without the misplaced trust in the other parent. And as a young adult, would have been a hell of a lot easier to realise that one parent did try everything in their power to protect me, even if they ultimately failed. Rather than having to come to terms with the fact they didn't care either. And in reality, no court can force contact on an older child if the child refuses.

And I'm pretty sure no one has said that is always the case, however some people refuse to acknowledge that it very much isn't just a case of leaving, or that they are to be blamed.
And I can tell you for me and I imagine the vast majority that 100% custody was not better! How does an older child know that they don't have to comply with the court order when they know no different than what the abuser tells them? When they are told the older parent abandoned them? When in actual fact they ended up in a psychiatric hospital. When they are fed lie after lie and turned against the other parent? How can they have any faith in a system where they are neglected and have to fend for themselves and bring up their younger siblings? Knowing the schools know all about it and it is never reported? When the other parent reports it and the ss visit tells the abuser exactly what's been said and by whom.
On one hand I wished my df could have stayed to protect us, but knowing what I now know if his suffering if he had he would have killed himself. But if I was placed in that situation there is no way on earth I would have left if I thought my kids would get even 50/50 with their dad, it's bad enough they have every other weekend.

Your saying it now. It very much is a fact that in some cases the other parent is entirely deserving of blame, and could have just left. Sometimes easily, sometimes less so. Nowhere have I, or anyone else failed to acknowledge that in some cases the above isn't true, just pointed out that in some cases there absolutely is blame on both sides and leaving was the far better option.

Faith in the system, hilarious. You don't have any either when outsiders raise suspicions and your 'blameless' parent backs up the abuser. Especially helpful when most people are prepared to believe the abusive parents version anyway because well spoken, wealthy, educated people with privileged lives don't abuse dc anyway. The knowledge that the only time they intervened was because they were aware their dcs violent breakdown and injuries weren't going to be easily brushed off by waving people towards expensive belongings.

If I was in my fathers place, quite forgetting the fact he had every option easily available, I know I would have done anything to protect my child. As I said earlier, including murder and life imprisonment if that was the only way. Not said 'yeah, inflict your shit on my child rather than me' and then calmly cracked on with my pleasant lifestyle.

And yes, of course some abusive parents can turn the dc against the other parent. But I'm not alone in having known from an early age which parent was safe, even if in my case they weren't deserving of that trust.

I'm not sure you comprehend/read properly, I have never said what you're inferring and I'm not sure why you find anything I've posted hilarious. Nor can you know what was going on inside the mind of person who was being abused. Not sure why you're seemingly so angry at me.
We are all here answering the aibu of :
To not understand how some people allow their dc to be raised in abusive homes?
And the answer is YES , and there are some people sharing various perspectives on why that happens. And that it is almost never as simple as leaving.
Don't forget it is only recently that emotional and financial abuse is recognised.
Our parents and grandparents have lived through different times. Not that long ago it was unthinkable to leave your husband if he hit you, it was in fact legal (and encouraged) for him to do so.
Even in the 90's I was one of only 2 children from my school with divorced parents, the stigma attached even then was huge.

@raspberryk I don’t think we can just absolve women who subject their dcs to abusive homes from all responsibility though. As a pp said, each situation is different and women have different motives to stay. And of course the perpetrator of abuse is to blame for their actions. But we mothers have an obligation to take care of our children and to protect them from abuse. Even if it’s difficult to do so, they need to do so and we can’t just blame someone else if we don’t.

@zsazsajuju

Well said
I wish I could absolve every mother of any blame due to domestic abuse but it isn’t that simple. I would just be making other people feel better about some of their bad choices, however much I am on the side of women - I am one, and I have been abused and have my own experience to draw on - I just struggle to absolve my own mother completely. Very very complex but she didn’t protect me, even though she knew she should. She has admitted this. It’s just destroyed my trust in her, I can’t help that. She knew of the things going on (sexual physical and emotional) and did not stop it. She had her own reasons (failings) and her motives were a mixed bag of embarrassment, denial and a strong desire not to let him ‘win’. She backs this up by still being very bitter towards him, not on my behalf but her own. He’s moved on, has a new life, she resents him. She’s more occupied by how it makes her feel than how I must have felt as a child. She had a lovely childhood with lovely parents. She was one part of robbing my childhood of that experience.

If you want to hear about my dad - he was the very broken product of an extremely abusive home, sexual abuse, neglect, physically and emotionally. He never had the skills to be a parent, he is an unpleasant, cruel damaged man. He didn’t walk away from his family when he was unhappy, he invited us all in to wallow in his unhappiness. He has an alcohol problem (facilitated by my mother unchallenged for many years, because it was easier to just let him get drunk and fall asleep). He did not like the psychological games my mother played with him, as she is more intelligent than him, it made him feel stupid and worthless. Part of the game was me. He knew it wound my mum up when he picked on me, so he could get to her to do so. And she used me to get back at him, by purposefully flouting any rules he put in place for the kids etc. I was her poor little golden child and his black sheep. Push pull push pull

raspberry I disagree with you, and think op is nbu. That doesn't mean I am angry with you, or have difficulty comprehending your points.

Your personal experience appears to be that you feel your parent did what they could in the situation, and that you as a parent were a victim and did everything you could. Which is a perfectly valid experience/ perspective to post from. But it doesn't give you any basis to insist it's the same in most situations.

Hilarious was in reference to your questions, which appeared to imply they weren't something I'd even considered, let alone lived.

Both of my parents say they were the victim of the other, but they both failed me, they were equally responsible for my well-being when I was a child so we're equally responsible for the trauma they caused/didn't prevent.

I agree with OP.

Just to reiterate I totally agree with Op and Trainspotting. There are some women who choose to stay despite their children being abused - they are not necessarily financially trapped or cowering victims. They have a duty to protect their children and do not. In my case my Step father would not have had any access to us post separation so that is not a factor either.

Some women genuinely are too selfish / lazy/ co dependent/ in love with the drama or money to put their kids first. Just because this is not consistently the case does not mean It is not possible.

I think it's sometimes more complex that the big list of reasons. My dm stayed because she would have felt shame at leaving. It was a small town. She worried all the time what people thought. She had grown up being subservient and caring for men. She thought that was her lot even when they were alcoholic abusers. I feel more anger at my much older brothers who could have rescued me but left me in that situation. I do not feel anger at my mum who was clearly conditioned to accept her fate.

@raspberryk I get what you are saying. My DM was born in 1927. She grew up in very different times.

We Discussed this issue at my group today

Women just get the blame for it all
They get sent to parenting courses , freedom etc

If they stay they are blamed as evidenced here
They also have their kids taken off them for failure to protect in extreme cases
If they leave they might get a refuge, maybe
They are stigmatised by society for their feral kids and use of council housing
They get screwed by cafcass and the dad (as evidenced on many threads ) gets the kids 50 50 and fucks the kids up

Yes as we know the overwhelming stats indicate that it’s the male abuse that’s the issue , police get called every 30 seconds

Makes me so angry

But yeah let’s start a thread picking on the mothers that stay shall we ?