(CW Child abuse) Why do mothers not protect their children from abusive boyfriends

[OutWithTheMule]

There has been another horrific child abuse death and I have noticed in the majority of these cases the mothers boyfriend has been abusing the child, and the mother is aware and allows it to happen, and usually protects them by trying to cover it up from the police after the fact.

In the awful case that has been in the news today the mother had only been with her boyfriend for 36 days. She allowed the abuse to continue because she didn't want him to leave her. How the fuck can you choose someone you have known 36 days over your own child!?

I just can't understand why these women choose their boyfriends over their children, if anyone laid a finger on my daughter I would flay them!! Even if you wouldn't physically intervene you would take your child and leave surely? If the boyfriend isn't the child's father they have no access to them if you just take them somewhere else. I know women are sometimes scared to leave abusive partners but often in these stories the partner is not abusing the mother, they are only abusing the child and the mother either passively allows it or sometimes joins in.

I understand that the fault lies with the boyfriends obviously, they are monsters and there is no excusing their actions, it's horrific. But it makes sense, violent men abuse children, it's straightforward as disgusting as it is. What I cannot understand for the life of me is why a mother would allow a boyfriend to harm their child or actively choose a boyfriend over their child. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Can anyone shed any light on these women's behaviour?

It is certainly very strange behaviour.

@schmeler but why do people make those choices?

Do you think you posting on mumsnet will protect children by excusing their abusers and saying they couldn't help it there there we need to give them sympathy and let them do it some more instead of cracking down on them and holding them to account for their choices.

Saying awwww but they were beaten as a child so they couldn't help it - what will that do to help kids who are abused? It will empower abusers to do more if they are not held to account for what they choose to do to others.

Same as you choose to excuse their behaviour I do not.

Because they want to. Same reason I had pizza for tea. I wanted it.

What is strange is excusing child abuse perpetrators and saying the have no control over abusing one person in private and their genes know they are in the vicinity of that person and in private.

What is strange is pretending someone is mental with a fabricated illness to silence them. Now why would you do that?

Because they want to. Same reason I had pizza for tea. I wanted it.

But why do they want to?

What brain chemistry?

The brain chemistry theory was debunked many years ago when it comes to mental health etc.

If that was the case tell me what chemicals change with mental health and what units are they are measured in, what is the normal levels of these brain chemicals and what the tests entail - what is a high level of such chemicals and what is a low level. What is the test for brain chemicals called and when you go to the Drs how do they perform it? How often is it repeated to check changes in chemicals and monitor them? How many children have these tests as routine to check their chemical levels? How does one request a chemical test after abuse? How long does the test take?

Because they want to and have control to do so. Same as how I have control over what I eat. I could eat pizza again tomorrow or not - it is a choice based on if I want to or not.

So you said looking for patterns can help stop it. So patterns are that they are in complete control and excusing it will stop it?

So on the theme of willfull ignorance,

I was discussing with a friend how Sara Sharif’s father’s original story from his note, to his phone calls (not the later lies blaming the stepmother), all expressed a surprising view that child beating is a legal form of child punishment. He says several times “I legally punished her but went too far..” or “I was punishing her but lost it” and that he swore to God that he will return from Pakistan for arrest and be judged (which he did). But at the trial he seemed to not comprehend that child beating itself is illegal and is child abuse. He thought he would be judged for loss of control during legal child punishment, a sort of accidental death by legal beating, an involuntary manslaughter kind of trial.

I have met adults who did not discover they were abused until they have been told that what was done to them was illegal child abuse. It shatters their worldview and sense of self, explodes family relationships like a grenade.

So abused children do in fact get to adulthood not knowing they were abused, and therefore some would get to parenthood not understanding the boundary between disciplining and abusing.

This had us talking about if being abused is your normal and you are gaslit to think that you’re not being abused but “legally punished” or “disciplined” then is it possible to grow to adulthood thinking that you’re not abusing your children if you do similar? Or in the case of mothers, if you’ve grown up in that sort of environment, brainwashed and conditioned and then your partner is spanking your child black and blue might you think it’s not abuse? And mutely stand by or even report misbehaviour to the partner to get the child a beating?

Sara Sharif’s dad reminded me slightly of many adults that are against a child smacking ban in England. You know the ones. The ones who say “I was hit as a child and it did me no harm, in fact getting the belt did me a world of good and taught me respect and kept me in line. If I hadn’t been smacked, I would have gone off the rails as a teenager and likely be dead right now. Kids these days are out of control, we need to bring caning back…” or variations on this theme.

The brainwashing of childhood being so powerful that even when told smacking is abuse over and over, their response is wilful ignorance. A blinkered insistence of ‘no its not’ because if they admitted to themselves it is and was abuse, then that completely changes everything they thought they knew about their childhood and their parents love or lack of love for them.

Obviously these people are not fine, they survived abuse but they fervently deny it was abuse, and therefore believe that if they smack their children they are not abusing them.

This could be one reason why those who were abused are more likely to abuse. They don’t know the boundaries of abusive vs normal behaviour unless they are told them (say in parenting classes) and accept that over what they were conditioned to accept as normal their entire childhood.

Even if they do know its not right and/or are told its not right and its abuse, your blueprint for attachment, your very early developmental experiences and modelling is very difficult to contain in a vacuum, it affects brain development, social and emotional development, patterns of attachment, self esteem and concepts of identity.

And there is usualy lots of focus in discussions and debates about abuse on physical and sexual abuse, but huge numbers of children are abused by being neglected, both with or without physical and sexual abuse.

That is quite the claim using your analogy and those stats do not make sense. Nope 74.475 % of all females are not abusers but you just said that 75% of all who are abused are abusers.

You oddly changed your stats now so lets just change them to what you originally said with the tables that 75% of all who are abused will abuse.

you said 75% of abuse victims will abuse.

and you said 75% of abuse victims will be abusers

@schmeler

No, I didn't say any of those things. What I said was:

among those who do become child abusers, a much larger proportion come from Table A (those abused as children) than from Table B (those not abused as children).

In other words: a significant proportion of abusers will be abuse victims

Using the 75% of attendees from my Abusers Anonymous analogy, and using your phrasing, it would look like this:

75% of abusers will be abuse victims

⚠️ !!! NOT !!! ⚠️ 75% of abuse victims will be abusers

Can you spot the difference between these two statements?

1. 75% of abusers will be abuse victims
2. 75% of abuse victims will be abusers

You said ALL are abusers on both table A and B. You said they are 100 abusers and 75% of them were abused in childhood so most of those abused will abuse others (75% of them).

Now you are copying me saying that they are different statements - thanks for finally reading my words and copying it back to me that they mean different things.

You said that all of them in the study were abusers. I said that not all were. You said they were.

In other words: a significant proportion of abusers will be abuse victims

A significant proportion of those abused will NOT abuse. Almost all will not abuse - not 75% at all. 8.25% as stated and as you said nope it is not 8.25% of those abused who go onto abuse other it is 75%.

@LoremIpsumCici
Very thoughtful and well expressed post. Thank you.

And sometimes the system unwittingly contributes. Imagine the absolute mindfuck of being told again and again to use kind hands, we do not hit, use your words , how bad and wrong hitting is etc. Then you make a disclosure or two or five and there's some fuss, maybe a meeting with the parent, maybe a SS visit and then... nothing. So maybe it is ok, maybe it's not that bad , maybe that's what everyone does, maybe hitting when angry is ok etc.

Yes exactly! I would expect that alot of boundary blindness in childhood abuse survivors would relate to neglect, verbal, and emotional abuse as those are harder to define and identify when in the thick of it. We see lively debates on MN with frequent disagreement as to whether an OP’s situation was abusive or not. If it’s hard for people with normal childhoods to identify & escape, then it must be incredibly harder for childhood abuse survivors.

It is a complete mind fuck and can happen in so many ways.

As well as your scenario, maybe nothing happened because no one believes you. This is admittedly more likely when a child is disclosing abuse by one parent to the other parent, or to an extended family member.

I can get my head around someone who, say, experiences emotional dysregulation or c-PTSD as a result of child abuse and might, for example, lose their temper a lot and on occasion impulsively smack their child for a minor misbehaviour. Afterwards they feel terrible they lost control and apologise. There are no other forms of abuse and they are an otherwise decent parent.

And I can get my head around someone smacking a child because, as you say @LoremIpsumCici, they were smacked and they genuinely don't see the problem with it.

But then you get a different kind of abusive parent who is malevolent and calculating. They think about the abuse they want to inflict in advance. They can see the terrible consequences of the abuse but plan to do it the next day and the day after that regardless because they derive some kind of satisfaction or pleasure from it. I can't get my head around this type of parent. Even if they experienced this kind of abuse themselves in childhood, I don't believe that they could watch a child struggle to breathe and pass out as a result of their abuse and not know it was wrong.

I can see how the right kind of intervention could change the behaviour of the emotionally dysregulated parent, but how do you intervene in the case of the malevolent kind? And being calculating and controlled, they're more likely to be adept at pulling the wool over people's eyes.

How can we recognise these types of people and how can we keep children safe from them? How do we make the call on whether to take the child away or not? Where will the child go if they're taken away, is a foster or children's home available? How can we assure their wellbeing if they are taken to a foster or children's home? How do you prevent the abusive parent regaining custody? And how can we mitigate the chances of a child growing up to become one of these parents when we (as far as I'm aware) don't know why some children grow to be impulsive parents, some grow to be malevolent parents and some grow to be parents who don't abuse?

I feel very angry about all of this because it happened to me, the daughter of a malevolent mother. Both she and the system failed me at every step of the way. The only reasonable outcome I can think of is if I had been placed with foster parents who genuinely cared about me and provided a safe and stable home for an indefinite period. Instead I was put in temporary foster care with unpleasant foster parents before being sent away to an awful facility which fucked me up well and truly.

There must be a better way, but what?

In my career working with children and families in the courts and safeguarding, the 'evil' parent is few and far between, no matter how horrendous their actions I can count on one hand the parents I have worked with who liked or calculated the harm and abuse. Over 25 years.

most are inept, like children themselves, MH, DV, SEN, LD, ND, dysregulated, substance/alcohol misusers. Pretty rubbish parents but without intent so to speak

Im talking about physical and emotional harm and neglect however, not sexual abuse.

Which category would you put Sara Sharif's father into?

What would the hallmarks of an 'evil' parent look like?

I'm genuinely curious because I struggle a great deal with trying to work out whether my mother truly wished me harm or whether harming me was simply a means to an end.

@kitteninabasket
I am so sorry you had an abusive mother a horrific lack of a childhood. My mum was an abusive alcoholic religious nutcase so I feel for you. It messes you up, especially in this culture where we have a lot of mother-worship and it is harder to be believed by anyone when it’s a mother instead of a father that is abusive.

Yes, I agree. Abusive parents that are malevolent, cold and calculating monsters do exist.

I can’t get my head around how/why anyone can do such things to a defenceless child either. I agree that no matter what abuse you may have suffered, there are certain extreme abusive behaviours anyone will know are going to be wrong.

I wish we could better identify them and keep children safe too. I wish the care system wasn’t full of abusers too- you’d think the government would care enough to ensure children in care aren’t being abused but that isn’t the case.

I wish you had been safe. ❤️
I too feel anger and grief over being robbed of a childhood.

I think mitigation might be helped with parenting classes that focus on what you should do, the right way to parent. Survivors of childhood abuse might know what not to do for extreme abusive behaviour, but not what they should do instead.

For example, its easy to be a parent that doesn’t hit if you’ve been beaten as a child, but not so easy to realise that belittling and shouting while less abusive than hitting, is still abuse. A survivor needs parenting classes or support that advise them on what they should do, and as well as to learn what is abusive as they may think, for example, that belittling is banter or tough love and screaming is ok when you angry because it’s not physically hurting another person.

We see the cycle of violence tends to be one of improvement from one generation to the next if survivors are genuinely trying their best with little guidance.

Well from what I read he doesnt come across as inept as such, the focus on 'punishment' and the need to control would put him more in the category where he got something out of it, rather than just not being able to manage himself and care appropriately if that makes sense.

I too think the majority are not of the ‘evil’ parent /monster sort. Which gives me hope because if most were monsters, then this is an unsolvable problem for society.

Which diagnostic ’booklet’ would that be? If you are talking about the DSM-5 or the ICD-11 you are showing your ignorance. Neither of those fall anywhere near the definition of a booklet. Both manuals are huge!