How can a parent let their child be beaten by an OH

[JugsyMalone]

I just don't get this. I am a single parent to 2 boys.

I would never be with a partner for one second who hurt my kids. I would batter the bloke back and be straight down the police station. Even if I was mortally afraid I would be out of the house with my kids at the corner shop or anywhere public asap.

But it's always the boyfriend who batters the baby to death. Yes, he's the nutter. But what is wrong with the mother?

But working 9, we're not talking male tigers or lions who kill strange males' cubs. We're talking adult, human males who have the intellectual capacity to make choices. There are plenty of men who would never in a million years think of emotionally, physically or sexually assaulting a child, whether or not it's their "blood" or not. The blame for the assault absolutely MUST be with the person who chooses to carry it out, no ifs, ands or buts.

Trying to understand why other adults in the frame (including the mother of the children involved,) isn't the same as making excuses for them not acting in the interests of the children. In fact, there have been many cases where women have been prosecuted for not preventing the father or another male from assaulting a child.

When I was younger, I probably would have also followed the line that it was the mother's "duty" to protect her children, come hell or high water. Things were alot more cut and dried for me then probably because I hadn't had that much life experience. I think the first time I really recognised the complexity of abusive relationships when I followed the trial of Joel Steinberg what, 25 years ago. He was convicted of manslaughter for the non-accidental death of his foster/adopted daughter Lisa who had suffered extreme physical abuse and neglect prior to her death. His partner Hedda Neusbaum was vilified in the media at the time for "allowing" the six year old to die (and even some feminists, most notably Susan Brownmiller, asserted that she should have been prosecuted for Lisa's death - but others like Andrea Dworking robustly challenged these views.) I remember seeing images of her torn out hair and puffy, bruised face and statements from friends and colleagues who knew she was being beaten and brainwashed for years and well, I guess it made me thing about situations like that from a different perspective.

But from the abused child's pov, it's the mother who failed to protect her who is to blame, as well as the dad who actually perpetrated the abuse. The mother, in my case is not just an innocent victim of abuse as she seems to think. She's also a perpetrator. But she doesn't see that. She only sees herself as a victim. And not only that, she sees herself as the only victim. She has completely failed to see that I was a victim too and that it was actually much worse for me than it was for her, seeing as I was young child at the time, whereas she was a fully grown adult.

Yes but I didn't say the mother bears all responsibility, did I? I maintain that they bear a responsibility nonetheless. I was careful to qualify that I absolutely accept there are situations in which women have little cultural, emotional or financial choices to enable them to step up to that responsibility.

In the same way men can make intellectual choices, so can women. If a woman chooses to join in taunting and slapping her child and finds it funny because she is blinded by love/good sex and where there is NO element of male intimidation, she is culpable for that. That is really not the same situation as either the one you describe or, say, my grandmother's experience. Not all experiences are equivalent.

The problem to my mind is that the assumption that there aren't situations where women are willing and complicit in the abuse of their children seems to suggest that this is something Women Just Don't Do, that women are all Florence Nightingale-type characters only sullied by their past experiences or current interactions with men. Which, when you think about it critically, really suggests women are weak and have no personal agency.

I believe society creates lots of situations where many women have no choice but to be weak and where they have no personal agency. However, I do think there are women who abuse children and others they are in a position to abuse for the same reasons that some men do - because they can, because they enjoy the power, because it is what they choose to do.

Sorry I haven't seen any assumption on this thread that there are no situations where women commit abuse or where there are no situations where they are culpable for not stopping it.

That's not what has been said on this thread.

JasmineR, I suspect the reason your mother can't see that you were the victim of abuse, is because if she acknowledged that, she'd then have to face the fact that she failed to protect you. And that of course, would open up a big can of worms for her, that she doesn't want to open because it would involve her examining her culpable behaviour as well as that of the man she lived with.

Basil, I think you might be giving credit to my mother where it's not due. I think she didn't see that I was a victim as well as her because she was simply too selfish to consider anyone else's feelings besides her own. Once she had been abused, in her mind it was all "poor me, poor me" and she literally could not see what was happening to me, her own child. She was totally consumed with what had happened to her.

I am really fed up of people saying women don't leave abusive partners because they are ground down after years of abuse. Why didn't my mother leave immediately after the first episodes of abuse towards her and certainly after the first episode towards me? Or if she couldn't leave why did she not put up and strictly enforce boundaries within the relationship of acceptable and non acceptable behaviour? Yes it takes courage to do that but I've had to do it within my own relationship and although I did find it scary at first, ultimately it's been very empowering and liberating. I'm fully in charge and in control over what happens to me, I have boundaries that nobody is permitted to cross. Why didn't my mother do the same with my dad? If I could do it why not she? And I grew up far more damaged than her, she wasn't abused as a child.

Have you asked your mother these questions jasmine?

What was her response?

Littlemiss, not really, I haven't had any contact with her for 6 years now. I know if I did ask her now I would get a blank look and no answer. And she would feel aggrieved I was asking such questions as she is nothing but a poor innocent victim and it's all my dad's fault. That is what she believes and nothing will make her see things differently.

So perhaps the reason why she did nothing to protect you was simply because she justified the treatment you received at her husbands hands.

How she justified it in her own mind, I don't know, but there are many many women who have done and continue to do so.

No, she did nothing because she was scared. I could see it in her face. She was too scared of my dad to do anything to stop him. She never stopped to think that if she was scared, how did I feel?

She was weak, scared and pathetic. Some women are.

jasminerice - is it possible that your Mum didn't leave your Dad because she was worried about him then having access rights? At least while they were together, she could be there to protect you from the worst of it but if he had you, say, every other weekend then she would have utterly lost the ability to protect you. It's easy to say that an abusive man would not be granted access to DC but that presupposes that you can prove the abuse.

pacifist, no, not at all. It doesn't make sense anyway, she did nothing to protect me whilst she was there so why on earth would she be worried about what was happening whilst she wasn't there?

I can try and fathom out that woman for the rest of my life and I'll be no closer to understanding her than I am now. She is just weird. She can't be insane because she managed to hold down a job as a teacher for years. But she must be mentally ill in an unrecognisable way as she doesn't fit any of the well known PD's such as NPD. But then she was very protective over my younger sisters, so she can't have been that ill.

I think I have spent enough time pondering over her. It never gets me anywhere. Maybe she really is an alien from outerspace? But then what does that make me

jasminerice have you read Toxic Parents by Susan Forward?

She goes through various types of abusive parents and you may well recognise your mother somewhere in the pages.

I'm not meaning to suggest you should read it or anything, if you are at peace with your life now and happy htat your mother is out of it and have no further use for spending any more brain-space on her, then obviously it is an inappropriate suggestion for which I apologise. But if there is anything still nagging at you, or you have any vestiges of curiosity left, that book may interest you. It has been so useful for so many people. Sorry if it's the last thing you wnat to do, though, to revisit old shit you've laid to rest.

Basil, I have read that book along with many others. My mother does fit the description of parents who do a role reversal and the DC's look after her instead of the other way around. But that doesn't explain her completely. But thanks for your suggestion. And yes, I've spent enough time on that woman. Far more than she's ever spent thinking about me. She was just a weak, pathetic, coward and it was my extreme misfortune to have had her for my mother.

about what you went through

that it's all history now

Pacifist, thankyou . It'll never be fully in the past and forgotten, it still affects me now, it always will. But it doesn't consume me anymore and it doesn't hurt like it used to.