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?

Hmm. If I can fit it in in between mumsnetting...

the vast majority are being abused themselves they have slowly been worn down and live in fear. this happened to my mum and 20 years after leaving him she still fears my stepdad if you meet her you would think she is a strong independent women in many ways she is but got caught up in an extremely abusive cruel relationship it was not just about violence it was emotional abuse too which he also used on my grandparents

she had real reason to believe that he would kill both of us if she left him, he showed that he was capable many times we both have the scars to show that

for all those that want to blame the women remember my mum she is a broken woman she will never get over the guilt of what happened to me and how our lives were torn apart, how she lost her daughter and i lost my childhood and the effect it had on all our family but the blame lies with one person and that is him, he choose to abuse. and sadly there are thousands of women like her they need support not to be put down do you not think they ask themselves everyday how this could have happened

Well as a victim of DV I don't get it either and I do blame my mother more than my father. This was my first calling to feminism, when dittany pointed out my terrible thinking.

Well I totally blame my mother for doing NOTHING to stop the abuse. At least your mother has the decency and courage to face up to how badly she let you down as your parent. My mother thinks she was a wonderful parent. It hasn't even occurred to her that it was her job to protect me from being hurt as a child. She blames my dad completely and so conveniently absolves herself of any parental responsibility towards me. My mother is a weak, pathetic excuse for a mother. She was always weak, she wasn't gradually ground down by my dad over the years. She was weak to begin with. A strong woman can be ground down but will sooner or later find the strength to leave. A weak woman never will. And so my mother is still with my dad. I despise her completely and will never forgive her for the way she failed me so completely

I don't get this moral distinction between "weak" women and "strong" women.

My mother wasn't ground down by my father, she has already been ground down by her mother and father and the society within which they had their marriage. Violence and alcoholism were a normal part of life to her, you just expected that from marriage and you hoped that your husband wouldn't be into that, but if he were, then you just had to put up with it.

I don't blame her for putting up with the abuse; she was surrounded by a society which told her that abuse was normal. I also don't particularly blame her for being abusive herself; I used to, but I now realise that she actually didn't know how not to be, and still doesn't. Her childhood and marriage, which didn't take part in a vacuum, but in the context of a woman-hating catholic society, damaged her so much, that it's kind of pointless to blame her. Maybe that's wrong because it means that I don't expect her to take any responsibility for her actions or life, but I know that expecting her to do so, would be like expecting a cat to bark and then being annoyed that it didn't, because it's not a dog, it's a cat and it can't bark, it can only miaow.

That doesn't mean that I forgive her or absolve her; she was violent, unloving and she damaged all her children in some way or another and I long ago gave up expecting her to function as a mother and I don't love her. But I honestly believe that it is incredibly unrealistic to think she should have realised that her childhood had damaged her and she needed to seek help. When she became a wife and mother, the first refuge had not been set up, DV was still not talked aobut, the long term impact of an abusive childhood was not understood as well as it is now. Added to which, to be absolutely frank, she's not that bright. It is hard enough for intelligent, educated, capable people to realise they need help, for someone who is semi-literate, filled with shit about the saints and the possibility of hell if you do wrong, surrounded by a culture which told her that her upbringing was normal (added to which, she was an economic migrant so any differences she did notice with other women's marriages, she could put down to them being English, therefore doing things differently), is completely and totally unreasonable. Was she weak? Yes I suppose she was, but FGS in a society which educated her to be "weak", should I really expect her to have been strong?

I'm not saying that people who have been brought up in abusive childhoods have a get out clause on finding out how not to be abusive; just that in my mother's case, I suppose I've accepted that the odds were so loaded against her, that she didn't really have a snowball's chance in hell. I feel sorry for her more than anything, sad that she has never been able to experience what real joy in life is and what love is and that she has no insight whatsoever as to why all her children keep her at arm's length because we don't love her.

'You know what, I am totally and completely ignorant of the basics of astro-physics.

So I don't post long perorations on the subject.

I wish people would follow a similar course when they know sweet Fanny Adams about DV. (And rape and breastfeeding and ooh, such a long list of subjects totally oblivious people feel the urge to talk about.)'

Lack of understanding of astrophysics doesn't have the same impact on my job as DV and the fallout Basil.
Are you saying that only those in the know, with direct experience should ever discuss certain subjects or ask questions?
Like all the stupid questions and assumptions that so many on here make about SN, disabilities and related issues that they feel affect them in RL situations?
Bit totalitarian and restrictive for me as a viewpoint.

No I'm not.

Occasionally, it does get a bit wearing though.

I agree about the weariness factor, and the irritation with the inability of others to see what you are saying, or that you know what you are talking about.
Which is why I sometimes don't contribute on Blue Badge threads, or Aggressive SN child should be excluded rants. Or other subjects I have personal experience of that can get me riled when discussed by the ignorant and uninformed and judgemental.
In my calmer moments, I realise that by knowing what I'm facing, I can make a better argument against their opinions, or sometimes that I can recognise a point or a concept that I hadn't thought of.
Which if I disregarded all comments I disapproved of, wouldn't ha[[en.

It's all very individual. My mother did not grow up in an abusive family. She was the pampered youngest child so perhaps never grew up or learned to stand on her own two feet. She was also a migrant to this country, but was well educated, a teacher in fact.

I know my mother well enough to know she did nothing to protect me because she was weak and scared. But if she was scared, I was petrified of my dad and have PTSD to this day.

My mother lacked the mothering instinct, the protective instinct, when it came to me anyway. She seemed to find it when it came to my sisters. She simply did not care about me and never bothered to pretend that she did.

I blame her for doing nothing to protect me. She could easily have asked her brothers for help. She has 3 lovely older brothers who would have helped in a heartbeat. But she was too weak, scared and stupid. And for that I have paid the price, through no fault of my own. And she takes no responsibility for her failures which is what gets me the most. She thinks she was a wonderful parent. She blames everything on my dad. She's a pathetic woman who didn't deserve to have me.

Ohh. The [ key is next to the p key. Live and learn.

My mother was abused by her brother of 15 years senior. He used to throw her down the stairs. My mother was obsessed by my father and needed him to ,love her more than he loved us, so him hitting us suited her. She was still a victim though, still is.

And to add insult to injury, she blames me for our terrible relationship. Apparently I was difficult for her to talk to. What a b*tch. She's not a mother. She's a witch.

I think it must be much harder to come to terms with abuse when you can see that it was actually possible for your mother to function as a mother, with your other siblings.

With us, none of us got any proper mothering. All of us were abused, all of us emotionally neglected and deprived. My mother couldn't function as a mother to any of her children, unlike some mothers (like your's jasmine) who appear to be able to be motherly at least to some extent with at least one of their children. It's kind of easier to assume that she couldn't, rather than chose not to, if you see that all of you got the same abuse. Selective abuse is much harder to grapple with though.

though sometimes it helps to really look at the outcomes of the varying treatments. my sister and i were treated very differently and in the short term, immediate who was loved more, who was the winner, the favourite, the praised etc it was definitely my sister. but in the long term the way my sister was treated has effected her too, as it has me. both were dysfunctional and have had consequences. looking at the long ranging effects i would choose mine over hers i think - though maybe that's the 'better the devil you know' instinct.

the reality is even if they were the ones who were treated better relatively they still grew up in a fucked up dysfunctional world.

Oh yes, completely agree with that SaF

It's also v. difficult quite often for the "golden children" to see what was wrong with the scapegoat's childhood.

They start blabbering on about how they've all had the same childhood.

I'm always flabbergasted by how many people believe that old myth, that parents treat all their DC's the same.

Apart from anything else, if they did, they wouldn't be humans, they'd be robots.

(and being the one badly treated can sometimes mean the luxury of actually seeing what a fucked up dysfunctional world that was rather than that blind, unquestioning following)

yep. and being treated, without evidence or reason to justify it, as a better, superior human being whose worth depends on being 'better' than others and having others put down and mistreated is not a good set up for life. it brings plenty of issues of it's own.

one example is that i can survive without external approval and therefore have had more freedom of choice. she cannot, therefore has not been able to have much authentic living and experience iyswim.

Actually some of bobbledunks post is true,

I grew up with a girl who as young as 5 would stand in front of her mum to stop her violent/alcoholic father beat her , but her mum would quite happily let her take a beating for her. I have witnessed this first hand went on for years. She was a vocal lady who had no qualms about standing up to hiom on other matters so the 'terrifief victim' doesn't apply always.

Of course many women are I think also DV is often a very hidden crime and laso women are often cut off early from support networks so where would they go?

Archemedes - so you think that someone who was beaten by their partner wasn't afraid of them?? Because she was "vocal", whatever that means. So she enjoyed being beaten did she or perhaps she was ambivalent about it or even welcomed it? How exactly did she feel about it?

She probably wasn't as afraid as the child its safe to say.

But that wasn't what you said or implied.