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.

I went through the same as you and in my experience my mother was a bad mum. She stayed for her own personal reasons and didn’t care about protecting her children. She waited until she’d had several babies (as having different dads was shameful apparently) and rinsed the benefit system while starving and neglecting her children as punishment for being our dad’s children, then she faked a serious assault as a way out.
I went NC when I was old enough to leave and I’ve never regretted it. She blamed her children for being in that position as she claimed she stayed for us to have both parents. As an adult I know it’s not healthy to stay together for the children, particularly in abusive situations. They ruined my childhood and left me with all types of mental health issues. Any parent who does that regardless is a poor parent imo.
Its unfair of your family to make these comments to you when they likely don’t know the full story. Only you know if your experience was bad enough that you can blame your mum for staying, not every victim sees things the same way. If she was a good mum to you in general sometimes that’s enough to know you had a loving caring mum who maybe couldn’t leave due to fear, money worries etc. I didn’t have a nice or loving mum so my opinion is quite different. Your childhood is your story and no one has the right to tell you how you feel or what your view is.
I hope you’re all in a better place now.

No, a woman isn’t to blame for a man’s actions, but she is responsible for her own.

I think there’s a desire to see these situations as a clear abuser/victim binary, when a victim can’t be an abuser as well. They can - the concept of the cycle of abuse is well known. If an abusive man grew up in an abusive household and this was normalised for him, does that mean he isn’t responsible for his own actions by virtue of being a victim? No. Was he a victim? Yes. Is he an abuser? Also yes. If a woman is being abused and does nothing to protect her children from abuse/actually throws them in the path of abuse to deflect it from herself, is she at the very least
complicit in the victimisation of her children if not an abuser herself? Yes.

Understanding the reasons for something is different from excusing it. You can understand why someone made the choices they made, and still hold them responsible for those choices, and the impacts those choices had on those with the least power in an abusive situation - their children.

In the case of your friend, her children may grow up to judge her harshly. They would have the right to do that, and saying ‘she can’t be held responsible’ to deny their feelings would be to deny the very real impact her choices had on them, as well as her responsibility as a parent to protect her children.

My mum was in a similar situation.

I will never denigrate her as a mother and believe she did the best she could in s* circumstances.

I love her dearly and we have a very good relationship.

Your feelings are your own as are your siblings.

It’s a tricky one. As a parent it’s your responsibility to protect your children. If you can’t or won’t then those children can be removed from you so the state is essentially endorsing that you are not a good enough parent. There is more support available these days than there was in our mother’s time. I think you can sit with the juxtaposition that your mother’s care of you was sub optimal while also having empathy for her situation.

My knee jerk reaction answer would be yes, I'd consider someone a bad mum if they stayed in an abusive relationship regardless of whether he was abusive to the kids or not, as it's still damaging to the kids to even be in that environment. However, I can accept it's not always as simple as that, I've never been in that situation thankfully so unless you've lived through it as either a parent or the child, I imagine it's near impossible to have a true understanding of it. From my own personal point of view, I'd do anything to protect my children, that's my number one job. There's not a chance in hell I'd stay with someone who was abusive either to me or them, no matter what. But like I say I've never lived through it so 🤷🏻

Do you have children yet @chasemee ?

the reason I ask is once you do, you may realise the choices she made were perhaps not the best. I had a similar upbringing but a lot of emotional, verbal and occasional physical abuse towards us children as well. All my life I thought my mum was an absolute hero for putting up with my dad, and it’s only been now I’ve had my own children I’ve realised she failed to protect us, and actually placed us in inappropriate situations especially emotionally eg my ‘role’ as a child was peacekeeper and moderator and I was actually ‘responsible’ for both my parents feelings and moods and often tried to distract my dad away from violence. Eg consoling your crying mother when you are a child is not appropriate.

Its complicated, 'good enough' depends more on the child than the mother. Some children will be profoundly damaged by growing up in an abusive environment. Some will overcome it and be pattern changers. Some abused women can be good mothers despite the abuse, some cannot.

Children who grow up to break the pattern do it in spite of awful parenting, not because they aren't affected by the abuse. You can be profoundly damaged and still do things differently. I am.

I'm also not convinced that you can do the work required for good mothering and be in an abusive relationship at the same time. The relationship doesn't support it.

@SuperGreens thats a very unusual take on things.

I do agree that some children are less sensitive than others, and some children require less perfect parenting than others. My DD is extremely sensitive and requires a lot more ‘management’ / handling with kid gloves than my DS who just roles with things a lot easier.

However, both my brother and I have been affected in different ways. I became a people pleaser, perfectionist, and if you didn’t know me you’d think I had ‘excelled’. However, I have always had difficulties forming relationships, didn’t have boundaries and allowed myself to be treated in a manner I shouldn’t have done. I’m also anxious, have low self esteem and am hyper critical. But nobody other than my husband would know that.

my brother has been shaped differently. He is bolshy, loud, aggressive and over confident. I don’t know him well enough to know what’s underneath the surface but he definitely does have his own issues.

My father was and still is a controlling bully, my mother wasn’t a bad mother but she was selfish. My father hit me so hard one night the marks were still visible the following day, my mother kicked him out but took him back a day later. When all the kids left home my dad amped up his abuse towards my mother as there were no children left for
him to torment, be violent towards and verbally abuse, she ended up having a nervous breakdown and he had her sectioned, she’s also now an alcoholic and he buys her the drink…it keeps her at home where he likes her. She was such a beautiful woman way too good for my father and now she’s nothing but skin and bone, and has lost all her teeth much to my father’s amusement. So although I don’t think my abused mother was a bad mother I do resent her sometimes for not leaving him, and then my guilt sets in for feeling like that.

@wentie I could have written much of what you've posted word for word! (also an anxious perfectionist people pleaser who seems undamaged but really isn't)

I get that. I know it isn’t binary. I also can’t stop looking at it from my perspective - which is as someone who was in an emotionally abusive relationship who left. Despite this, my ex still uses my son as a pawn. So the abuse of my son carries on. It is just so subtle that no- one will do anything about it. It’s things like not taking him to his activities, medical appointments or play dates/parties because he is playing mind games with me and it’s a power play ( it’s all to get at me rather than punish my son). I can see why some mothers stay in that scenario because their kid is looked after by their mother full time and so they parent all the time.

I agree you need to leave an abusive relationship. It’s important to me that my son doesn’t see it and think it’s normal. But he misses out on things.

obviously in more serious abuse cases, people need to leave to protect their kids. And if someone was hurting my kids it would be a no brainer. But I can see why people make bad choices.

as for my friend, I agree completely. Her ‘D’ H is verbally and emotionally abusive to his kids. It has a direct impact and she’s more interested in having a big house in a posh area ( if they halved it, she’d have a perfectly nice 3 bed in same area). But on the other hand, I genuinely think she thinks she’s doing the best for her kids.

But on the other hand, I genuinely think she thinks she’s doing the best for her kids.

They always do.

I completely disagree with placing so much blame on the child.

Actually I think abused women just don't know what to do. How to do it.

Having been in that position, I completely understand the mind befuddling fog of fear. It's paralysing. You can't function properly at all. And it lasts a long long time even after you've left.

Absolutely - If you stay in the abusive relationship you choose to expose your children to it.

You may then he will only abuse you but often there will be other abuse towards the children.

Staying keeps the child a hostage in the abuse and ruins their childhood.

As a child in this situation, I speak from experience.

A very wise answer. Also, times were different back then and many women had no power/resources to leave. Women may also have had genuine fears that their husband would take it out on the children if they tried to leave ie family annihilators.
I also found out recently that my dad kept the council tenancy in his name only - as did several of my uncles. Bastards.

My mother wasn’t a bad woman, but she was flawed.

I know she loved us fiercely. I know she thought she was doing her best to protect us. I know that she was dealing with societal forces in the 70s and 80s that I don’t have to deal with as a mother today.

I also know that she left me to protect her and my sibling on occasion, even if she didn’t realize that she was doing it. I know that I witnessed more violence and abuse than she realized. I know she relied far too much on me being a responsible child at far too young an age.

I know that even when I had the money and resources to protect her myself, she chose to stay. I could have snapped my fingers and put her in a flat and hired a solicitor. I could have helped her disappear is she wanted. She didn’t really want to leave.

maybe that does make her a bad mother, I just think of her as broken. Honestly, I know my abusive father was broken in his own way as well, but I will give him the label without hesitation.

Thanks for reading and understanding my post.

🙄

Wow so because you’ve given donations to victims of domestic violence, you’re now an expert on when they should leave?

Can you actually read English???

A poster commented that it was very hard for a woman to leave & go into a shelter.

I agreed with the qualifier that many do leave/have left.

I explained that the ways in which I personally am aware of women who have left, through the following contact points;
Working next to a shelter
Donating to shelters
Speaking to and being in the workplace of my relative who works for WA
Reading the stories of those who did so on here.

How TAF do you get what you've started ranting about from my post???

My simple, obvious point was that (in response to another post) that while I agree it is hard; many women have done it and continue to do it.

That is not claiming to be an expert.
That is not making any comment whatsoever on when the best time to leave is (where are you getting that from?!)

I have absolutely no clue what your point about benefits is.

I added that it would be relevant to know what time period the op's mother did not leave during. ... because faculties and information and help was not as available the further back we go.
Another totally reasonable point.

What an utter waste of time responding to stuff like this.

Wow. Tell us you don’t understand domestic violence without telling us you don’t understand domestic violence 🙄

@hazelplayer I think I see the point you're trying to make but I also see why you're being challenged. As someone who's actually worked for WA the resources for women leaving abusive relationships is still woefully inadequate and I have had to turn down many requests for women in desperate need because our refuge was full. One in 4 women will experience DV in their lifetime. Obviously not all of them will require refuge accommodation but it's still a much bigger number than what can actually be provided. Many women need to wait before a space is available which is incredibly dangerous for them. Then there is the issue that that space could be anywhere. Not near your job or your family or your kids school which means really painful losses all round.

Then you've the issue that benefits aren't really that much to get by on. I've had times where I've been trying to make the maths balance for people who were living genuinely very frugally and I couldn't make it add up. Never mind the 6-8 week wait before UU is approved. Plus you need to have access to your I'd documents to make an application in the first place - not all women have access to that.

Then the issue around children and the fear of an ex getting shared custody and having access to the children when you aren't there to protect them. The courts, social services and the police work incredibly separately so this is a massive fear for many women.

Your post (unintentionally) suggests that it's so much easier for women now that they should just be able to leave, when it's not as simple as that.

I would never automatically label an abused woman as a bad mum.