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 SGM there are some women who aren't too frightened to leave, they just don't want to. They put having a relationship above the health and happiness of their DC.

Does living in a society that stigmatises women for not being in/staying in relationships mean women are blameless if they prioritise the relationship over their child's safety?

I can see that it explains why they might, and offers some useful understanding for general situations, but I struggle with the idea that women have no responsibility to look out for their children's safety because of society.

It's a culture that fetishises women's caring role fir their children as much as it demands they always have a man around.

About the only "valid" reason for leaving is abuse (violence only).

I'm not sure you can put the blame for women staying entirely on a culture that valourises women who protect their children from violent men.

Even if you understand why some women privilege a relationship with a man over their children's safety, I don't think you can excuse it at the individual level.

Either women are full people, capable of making their own moral decisions (excluding victims of serious domestic abuse) or they are not.

The culture argument also excuses men who grew up in a society that condones male violence and control of women.

Sorry, just seen your post re society blaming women for not having relationships, having a "proper" family. I agree.

I've posted this before but I'll post again. I know a woman who beaten by her husband, we suspect she was also prostitued by him. He emotionally and occassionally physically abused the children (never sexually).

She stayed because he told her if she left he would hunt her down and murder her and her children, if he could not find her he would kill her brother and elderly father. If she got him arrested he would get someone else to do it for him. She believed him.

The abuse stopped when his children grew up enough to fight back.

She's still with him. As a coping mechanisim she seems to have justified the abuse in her head and convinced herself it was not that bad because he also did x, y and z and wasn't bad all the time.

The mind games are worse and cause far more damage than the actual abuse. I don't know what the answer is or we can help these woman. I do know that in this case someone must have heard the abuse going on through the walls and no-one stepped in to help/called the police.

SAF - you said "you also have to look at the advice that gets doled out here to women being treated badly and very unhappy in their marriages where everyone piles on to say that marriage takes work you don't just throw in the towel and they should train their man, change themselves, put up with it etc because god forbid they don't want to end up a single mum."

I don't know which threads you've been reading but the ones I've seen usually only have a very minor percentage of posters saying anything like that! If anything, MNers are usually criticised for the exact opposite - being "too quick" to say "leave the bastard".

Dooin My mum used to say that the bruises would fade but the words would stay with her forever.I understand what she was saying, but as children both the words and the violence towards my mum have had long lasting affects on us.
Our neighbours heard the abuse too no-one called anyone or did anything.

Thumbwitch - here's the campaign - www.redonline.co.uk/savealife

I saw a woman and her partner at a bus stop once. She and her partner were white and she had an older (7) mixed race son...and a white baby girl. The "man" was goading the little boy...pushing him lightly and repeatedly n the shoulder and putting him down for some infraction.

The "woman" just sat there looking gormless while her lovely little boy got more and more bullied and his little face has SUCH a look of hatred that I was devestated, I was young myself then....too young to say anything...but I wish I had...I wish I had. I hated that woman more than the man....for sitting there and watching her son get bullied llike that.

Thanks Maresedotes - signed it :)

Maresedotes-signed it too

but chas surely you can see the injustice of that - that you hated her more than the man actually doing it?

athinginyourlife - you seem to be making out that every point or factor that people say should be considered is being proposed as the truth for every woman or relationship which it is not. no one has argued that way - they have said that it is complicated and there are a lot of factors to be considered in why people behave in ways we can't ourselves imagine doing etc. i'm not sure why you keep trying to make a black and white polemic out of what is clearly a very complicated spectrum of factors.

i don't think either that anyone has talked about these reasons or complexities making anyone blameless.

I think the vilification thing is because we can't imagine abusing a child, but we can imagine the instinct to protect.
We put ourselves in the looker-on's shoes rather than the perpretrators'. It's outside our frame of reference.

No swallowed I cannot. The woman was his Mum...his flesh and blood. He called her Mum and the man by name. Her job is/was to protect her child....why is she not more to blame than ANYONE?? She let this prick into his little life. He was hateful...damaged whatever...so why let him in?? She failed at the one thing she was meant to do and which could have stopped the damage.

The "man" is of course hateful...but he was what he was...I waste no time hating someone who is that damaged...he is formed and nothing will change him now....she on the other hand...as a Mother your job is plain and simple and she failed him. I would hate a Father more than his girlfriend if he allowed his child to be abused.

Um, I'm not trying to make a black and white polemic.

I'm pointing out that there is one (or two, in fact) that always go along with this argument:

Q: Why do women allow their children to be abused?

A1: Because abused women are too frightened to leave.

A2: Because they are selfish and letting their children down.

Every answer on the thread is saying pretty much one or the other.

My point is that either can be true, depending on the situation.

I'm not sure what is "black and white" about that. If not all women whose children are abused and fail to act are victims of abuse, the answer A1 is not sufficient.

Answer A2 has all sorts of other assumptions, misogynist and otherwise, that are worth unpacking - what part does culture play? to what extent are all women victims of patriarchal culture? is it reasonable to assume some level of abuse in any parent who doesn't protect their children? when should our responsibilities to protect our children override our learnt responses? Is there a greater burden placed on women to protect children than on men? how does that play itself out in society?

If that sounds like a black and white polemic to you, then ignore me.

there are some women who are able to protect their children against abusers and there are some women who are not.

unfortunately abusers are not usually attracted to the strong, self-confident able women

chas

I watched an incident at my local shops recently. A man, a woman & a boy of about 6. The woman & the boy were outside the car & the man was sat inside, shouting at the little boy. Every time he opened his mouth, the woman jumped, she looked more scared than her (assuming here) son. The lad was barely paying attention, but the woman looked terrified. Security started to make their way over & demanded they get in the car before driving off. But I cannot emphasize how terrified she looked.

Maybe when she (in your story) let the man in, he was a wonderful (on the surface) man who promised her the world, was caring, loving, attentive etc, but over time she has become so ground down by him, his treatment of her, that standing up to him would mean a beating perhaps. You're judging her & condemning her when you know NOTHING about the life she leads.

& he (the man in the car) demanded they get in the car before driving off

no and often they've half their work done for them by a previous abuser maybenow they know who to target.

i think also we make this distinction in a firm way between children and adults when in reality the child you see being abused and downtrodden will likely be the adult someone sees allowing their child to be abused and downtrodden a decade or so later. there wasn't some lightbulb moment when the individual ceased being an abused, broken child and became a healthy strong adult who should know how to stand up to an abuser.

some people go straight from abusive home to abusive partner without any intervention or help or clear period of space to move on from the damage of childhood that makes adulthood look any different. your bus stop woman may be one of those children chas. she may know no different and not even have a small part of her mind that believes in a world where people treat each other decently with love and respect and gentleness - she may never have experienced it or seen it.

it's funny how we forgive things in the past, because 'it was like that then', but in the present assume everyone lives in the same culture as us when in reality they (like the people we forgive in the past) may well have always lived in a culture where it too was just like that.

also worth remembering that all of the children with ebd, sn etc in childhood don't suddenly heal or disappear when they hit 18 years of age. many take their limitations and problems onwards into the relationships they form and the parenting they perform.

so many factors.

have to say i find this easier in the abstract though. in real life i cannot be around neglectful and damaging parenting and if someone is engaged in it and no encouragement, advice, reality calls etc change them or reveal willingness to resolve things i can't be around it.

I agree that we don't punish the perpetrators adequately, or have enough education and deterrents there.
DP has on several occasions intervened in such situations where she has felt a child is under threat. On one occasion, the mother of the child berated her aggressively, and DP told her in no uncertain times that the kid needed to see that some adults did not think what was happening to him was OK, that some adults will act to protect him if his own parents won't.
Big wake up call for the waste of space that were that little boy's parents.

It happened to me. My xp physically and emotionally abused my DS1. Eventually social workers stepped in. My 2 DSs were taken away from me. Xp was removed by court because he wouldn't leave. I had 2 DDs with him.
I did get my sons back, I fought hard for them through court.
To this day I still beat myself up over it. I don't understand why I let it happen. Regularly cried over it in the past, played it over in my head over and over again. I can't explain why. This all happened 6 years ago.
In tears now just seeing this thread and the memories it brings up.