Can you ever call an abused woman a ' bad mum ' ?

[chasemee]

My father has been pretty abusive to my mum all my life. I never saw a healthy relationship there at all.

He called her names, sometimes slapped her around. He has serious anger issues. He provided for us financially but his behaviour was always pretty mean on the whole.

My mum should have left him, of course she should. But it's not as simple as that. She tried to leave, but she had no resources and her own family also turned their backs on her.

She did what she could to placate my father and live the best life with us that she could, considering the situation she was in.

Her father was also extremely abusive towards her mother and her siblings.

She was stuck.

Anyway, other members of the family are now saying that she's a shitty mum for not protecting her kids from an abusive situation.

It's really wound me up. It's easy to say that you would leave an abusive man, but without being in that situation - you can't know what you'd actually do.

My dad didn't abuse me and my siblings physically or anything like that.

Can you? Yes. That isn’t to say all are, as it’s very much dependent on the individual.

I think saying ‘no’ can be damaging to the children in these situations, if ‘your mother was the victim!’ is used to deny them their right to be angry at a parent that failed to protect them, or in some cases may have directed the abusers anger towards them (and it does happen).

Children do not the agency of adults, and while it may be feel impossible for an adult to extract themselves from an abusive situation, they have more ability to do so than children who rely on their parents to protect them. I’ve known adults that hold their mother or father responsible for allowing them to be abused, and I do believe they have the right to feel that way.

I think anyone can be a bad mum if you look at it from a child's point of view rather than as a judgment on someone's character. I mean bad parenting can still be very damaging to a child even if there were very good reasons why that person was a bad parent.

I think it also shows that how good a parent is depends a lot on circumstances and the society we live in. No one parents in a vacuum. A supportive society and benign circumstances would make most people better parents.

Op, I could be wrong but I get the feeling from your post that you want to believe that your mum was a good mum and maybe she was irrespective of what anyone else says Maybe she was the best mum she could have been given the circumstances.

You can't view historic abuse through today's lens. Abuse was considered a private matter and outside agencies rarely got involved. The law to protect women from DA only came in in 1976 and it didn't change attitudes overnight. There was little, if any, support for victims. Women couldn't have their own bank account before the Equalities Act in 1974, so living independently was nigh on impossible without support from your family. Benefits as we know them today didn’t exist. Women were expected to put up and shut up.

It really depends, you can't generalize.

Some women can't leave because they think it could end up worse for the kids.

Some women can't find the inner strength or don't have the capacity to see the problem.

Some women choose bad men over their kids.

I can, and do.
My mother had numerous chances to leave, when my father was beating her her parents threw away half of their stuff and completely emptied most of their house so we - my mum, siblings and I, could move in, rent free, to get away from him. But she didn't want to be a single mother nor did she want people thinking she had abandoned us so we all had to stay. When she finally stood up to him and demanded he stop hitting her, he did, instead he started beating my sister and I. Again, my mother stayed, only this time she pretended nothing was happening. If he had hit my brothers, then she probably would have done something, but we were just girls so didn't need protecting I guess. Should point out here that my father was also having a long term affair and he didn't want anything to do with us kids so its not like my mother was staying to protect us from him if we had to do joint custody, he made it very clear he didn't want to spend any time with us at all. When teachers, school friends, their parents, and Social Services got involved my mother would lie and claim that we were just really clumsy or had been fighting each other. She really didn't care about any of us, she just wanted to keep up the façade of a happy family, and in doing so she has completely ruined how we all deal with relationships, not just romantic ones but all of them. My brothers are just like my father, my sister has bad anger issues, and I am constantly letting people walk all over me and thanking them for it.
Both of my parents were abusive shits, just because my mother was abused as well doesn't change that.

Well nothing seems to have changes for kids these days just looking on this forum alone

There should be laws for anyone who allows a partner to abuse or mistreat a child biological or not but the cycle will continue to the next generation for people and their bad choices

I always feel these women are the very best of mothers. So many mothers are quite selfish 'I couldn't bear to lose the children' is fair enough, but not necessarily good for the children. Being willing to truly put your child's needs before your own is amazing

When are you talking about OP. In the past it was even more difficult to leave and DV and impact on children wasn't regarded in the way it us now. Some people don't make the best choices or haven't the where withall to. Mostly people just do their best and if you feel she did under the circumstances then that's what matters. Parents aren't either perfect or all bad. Mumsnet holds mothers to a very high bar especially mums of a different generation.
But also ,yes abused woman don't always make the right choices and put their men, any man above the needs of the children . This can be for many reasons , but they can abuse and fail to protect.

Women in domestic relationships should always leave of course they should, but is it easy, is it hell. I'm a therapist and I meet many of the mums and the children that have been in this situation. I feel it's very easy to judge the mum but how many of those judging her have walked a mile in her shoes. Often these mums are the most loyal and caring mums I'll meet and they carry such guilt with them. Many do leave in the end but probably not soon enough. There will always be impact on the children though. It's really hard isn't it, are these women bad mums for not leaving or are they doing their every best in a terrible situation. I guess it can sometimes help to imagine yourself as your mum at that time. To decide if she simply put her partner first or did she have limited choices, no family support, no money, nowhere to go etc. maybe this will help you understand her motives for staying and you can then decide if you feel she has your needs in mind. It's tricky op.

Very easy to judge, isn't it? Until you yourself are in that situation.

Of course you can op; being abused doesn’t mean you’re a good mum. Plenty of abused women are bad mums, plenty of non abused women are bad mums. Plenty of noth are good mums

in todays world in the uk though, you can leave , there is support and resources , so if you chose to stay and have your kids grow up in an abusive home then you bear a responsibility

I agree it is easy to judge. It's comforting too.

You say your mum was abused as a child, then stayed in an abusive relationship. I think judging her from the outside is pretty unhelpful. I don't think it's helpful to divide people into 'good mum' 'bad mum' crude categories.

Did you have a good enough childhood? It sounds like you didn't. I'd focus energy on healing from that, understanding how it affected you and making progress in your own life.

It is though isn’t it. Right at its core. That’s what it involves.

This comment is genuinely silly @Sparklywhiteteeth

It ignores both human nature and the practical realities.

For starters, inside your head are you imagining there are anywhere near enough shelter places?

Very naive.

Anyway, other members of the family are now saying that she's a shitty mum for not protecting her kids from an abusive situation.

Where were they when she needed their support?

I agree with this.

I say that as someone who had an abusive father who abused my dm and the kids.
My dm was a victim and good enough mother.

I also agree its not easy, if my dm left when she "should" have he'd have had unsupervised access / shared custody which as a parent myself now i understand the dilema/horror of. By staying she could "protect us" more in some ways

But he did abuse you by abusing your mum.

By your logic, what you're saying is that if you get married and have a child and the man is severely abusive to you but doesn't hit your child, then that's OK. Because you're the adult female and thays what happens to women and that's what you've learned. If you disagree with that statement then it contradicts your view about your mum's outcomes.

Yes, she was always more susceptible, and you will be too.

No, your mum is not a perpetrator of violence. She had every right to choose that relationship. And she did, over and over.

Don't get me wrong, it is hard to leave. It's also hard to experience violence. It's one of those situations where "choose your hard" applies.

For your own mental health, I don't think your brain can allow you to process that the both exposed and modelled an unhealthy relationship and that its pure luck that you didn't witness or find your mum murdered. You weren't safe.

I get it though. My mums dad was violent and she was proud of pulling herself out of it. She herself tolerated stuff that I wouldn't have by a boyfriend. I hope woth all my heart that by the time my daughter has a relationship that we have finally broken the cycle. Sometimes it takes generations. But someone, like my mum or you, have to take the hardest step and start that change.

For what it's worth, I think it's forgiving of you to love her knowing she did her best. But I think it's OK to grieve for your childhood and know that, while se is not responsible for the abuse, she had a role in shaping your childhood, your feelings of safety, healthy relationships. I'm sure there were even times when you said or did certain things to avoid you dad hurting yur mum. You can love her and still wish she had left him.

Is.she still with him?

I think it’s easy to make these judgements when you’re on the outside looking in at someone else’s life and what they’ve messed up.

I don’t know how long ago this happened OP, but I can vouch for the fact that it’s not easy to leave now, nor was it 8 years ago when I took my kids with me and left my/our abuser. I’m glad I did it, I have no regrets now, I did at the very start when we had to swap our home (unhappy as it was) for a poky little room in a crowded refuge, had social services on my case, family court and our lives had generally been turned upside down. We were in refuge for a year give or take, partly for our safety and partly due to the lack of affordable housing. Most people who lived there with us did so for a similar amount of time. Which helps to cause a backlog of single women and families who need help but can not access it. Many refuges have long waiting lists. Mine would still help where they could but they couldn’t offer a safe space to stay unless they had enough beds.

I know a fair amount of women whose children have been removed because for whatever reason they can’t/won’t stay away from their abusers and are therefore deemed a risk to the children. All these women seemed to have one thing in common: they had no family they could
turn to for whatever reason and therefore I suppose they felt their abuser was the only person they could turn to.

No.

But plenty of women have done it.

I know this because i worked next to one, I've given donations to them, my relative by marriage works for WA, and this board has plenty of examples of women who have.

So your incredulity and derision is overstated.

If this was before shelters and decent benefits, it would be a lot more understandable. That's what I was trying to establish.

My Mum was a shit Mum. She was sexually abused by her own father, beaten and controlled by my Dad, has complex psychiatric disorders and alcoholism (and is possibly a narcissist). She was completely mentally absent (and often physically) when I was growing up, until my siblings and I were taken into care after years of neglect.

But I love her, and I don’t blame her for how she was. I’m sure she probably did the best should could, and that’s all anyone can do. She was just too damaged to be a mother and couldn’t cope with the responsibility. She never learned to parent, but she was never parented herself. She’s actually a very doting grandmother and I take a lot of comfort from that now.

So in short, I think that yes, you can be a shit mother because of abuse.

in my opinion a good mother always puts her child first. I find it hard to believe that she couldn’t leave when she wanted to as women’s hostels and benefits have existed for some time. Sure the financial situation wouldn’t have been easy, but we are fortunate to live in a country where the government will support you whilst you get on your feet again. I see no valid reason to keep your child in that situation. I was a child living in a bad environment, and I’d never put my children through that. I know it’s not always easy to leave, but if women want to, there’s a lot of support out there. I’d find it hard to accept that she had no choice but to let me grow up in that environment but you know the situation better than anyone else

It’s still really hard though. Just not enough spaces, sometimes having to move out of the area which adds to the hardship, and frankly some refuges aren’t as good as others. I was really lucky with the one me
and my kids ended up in as the staff were brilliant and helped up loads. Even with that help, we were stuck there for a year.

That’s just the practical stuff too, not emotions, mentality, patterns of behaviour etc, that can be hard to break.

I think some mums stay because they think they can take the abuse and protect the children from it by thier presence. Lots of abusive fathers are awarded unsupervised contact and that it's some mums worst nightmare.

.

I was a shit mum while I was with my ex, especially near the end. It eats me up inside when I think about it for long enough. I tried to kid myself for a long time it was best for them to stay because they were little and at the time I could paper over the cracks (or thought I could). But children remember stuff and they want and are entitled to answers. Which I have done my best to give them. As well as apologies for my part in what they went through by staying as long as I did (my children were in single figures when we left but that’s plenty long enough to mess things up).

I’m definitely a better mum now. Would never, ever advocate anyone staying in a relationship “for the kids sake”. Wanted to reply to your post because it resonated with me. Your mum is very lucky to have you as her child.

I have a lot of sympathy for these women- I have to co-parent with a particularly nasty man. He never lays a finger on me, but I still suffer constant insults, verbal abuse. And he does everything to make Co parenting difficult.

choices about my son’s education and health are incredibly difficult and stressful because this is his only way of getting to me.

As much as I love my DS, there are times when I wish I’d never had a kid with this man.

and there are times when I’ve been very down when I’ve considered leaving my DS with him full time to get away from him.

imagine going into work and being bullied constantly. You’d tell people to walk away and get a new job. People take their own lives because of workplace bullying- imagine having that from a co- parent.

I adore my DS and luckily I have the resources to defend myself from my partners worse bullying. I don’t rely on him financially and have my own home. ( I had to pay my abuser as was main breadwinner).

I can’t imagine how difficult it is for these women and I understand why they leave. Even though I haven’t done it.