It is something that always troubles me on mumsnet.
I had very abusive parents, both in different ways. My father was a gambler who made our lives a living hell, and I know my mother had a terrible life with him. She was only 20 when she married him, he was 30. She was pregnant with me. I don't know if she would've married him if she wasn't pregnant with me. Mabye yes, mabye no.
I have younger brother. Unlike me, my mother adored him from the moment he came to this world. He was the apple of her eye and there were always cuddles, kisses, hugs for him. You can see it on our family photographs.
As long as I remember, my mother (and father) never kissed me, never hugged me, never cuddled with me. I remember my father holding my hand once during winter olympics, and that was it.
But there was always a belt and a cane in the kitchen if I get naughty. And I did. I haven't eaten lunch - cane over my hands and back, something fell from my hand and broke, belt, I said something I shouldn't (I was four when it started), cane. You get the picture.
Nobody ever shouted and hit my brother.
I was a house maild, ever since I was 6, washing and cleaning like a proper adult. I was 8 when I started ironing saturdays, for hours, because my parents had uniforms and there were lot of them. My brother never made his bed.
Until I met my husband 10 years ago, I didn't know how happy a family life can be. I have two children now, a boy and a girl, and looking at them for the life of me I can not see why my parents made such a difference between me and my brother.
My father was a crap father in every way, but ne never beat me (well, it happened once).
I now live in the other party of my country. I am not NC from them, but I said to myself that I will never ever in my life be alone with them, only if my husband was there. This happened two years ago after spending a week alone with my mother and my children, and she started abusing me again, not with cane, but every other way.
But this is my question. If my mother had a mumsnet in her day, she would come here and write about her hard life. And it was hard. Very poor, no clothes in the winter, alcoholic father, gambler husband, nobody to help her with two little children. She was in hell most of the time. The only thing she had was her job she loved and without it we would be hungry.
She would write all that, probably skipping the part about daily beating her older child, and everybody would jump to tell her not to be so hard on herself, and that she is doing best for her children and that her children love her no matter what.
I see posters coming and asking if they're a terrible parent all the time. Sometimes, they're really not, just too hard on themselves, you want to hug them and tell them, but sometimes, they're not. You can see that even from the things they write, and they probably do not write the whole story. And they're always said they're good parents, doing their best.
So my question is, why on mumsnet it is not allowed to say mother is sometines awful mother? I'm saying mother, because we have threads about crap fathers on daily base and nobody is defending them.