You do not have the right to subject your child to an abuser
If you have the ability to leave, your right to give an abuser another chance ends when you have a child.
“My mom insults my daughter’s body, but it would break her to stop letting her have sleepovers with my kid.”
“My dad spanks my kids and once hit them with a belt, but using him for childcare is the only way I can get a date night.”
“My mom abused me as a kid, but I want to break the cycle of grandparents in my family being cut off from their grandchildren, so I let her take my daughter over the weekends.”
“My brother molested me, but he’s old and sick now, and I know he’d never hurt my baby.”
These are all real examples of questions I’ve seen in advice columns, or questions emailed to me.
I want to scream from the rooftops: You do not have the right to subject your child to abuse just because you can’t say no and set good boundaries.
You don’t have the right to even risk exposing your child to abuse.
Your right to make bad decisions ends when those decisions cause your child to be abused.
Millions of women across the globe are trapped in abusive relationships that they cannot safely end. They have to make gut-wrenching decisions: Do I subject my child to this abusive environment, or do I risk leaving and a court giving my husband 50% time with them, so he can abuse them more? Do I stay in this relationship and give up my social life so I can remain physically present to protect my child, or do I leave and risk my husband killing us all? Should I try to appease my asshole husband for a few years, until the kids are old enough to move out, or should I divorce him knowing he’ll take his anger out on them?
These are not the women I am speaking to. When leaving poses a real physical danger to your child, everything changes.
But there are thousands of children being abused by monsters because their parents can’t seem to gather up their courage and break generational cycles.
Being abused damages your brain. It causes you to view abhorrent treatment as normal, and bad treatment as wonderful. It disrupts your ability to think critically about your abuser. This is why so many adult children of abusive parents worship their parents. They want to believe that their parent did what was necessary and right, and that they are stronger for it.
You’ll hear all kinds of bullshit from abusers and their defenders, and if you are yourself an abuse victim, you’ll be primed to accept their excuses.
It does not matter if the potentially dangerous person asserts they would never hurt your child. Abusers don’t see abuse as hurtful, and they know to lie about it.
It doesn’t matter if they take your kids on meaningful outings or give them gifts. All abusers do this sort of thing.
It doesn’t matter if they are nice sometimes, or if you want to maintain a good relationship, or if they guilt you about taking away their grandkids (or nephew or whatever).
And by the way, a hallmark of abuse is wanting to separate kids from their safe parent. Abusers seek alone time with kids so they can control and influence them. If someone at your life bristles at supervised time with your kids or insists that they can only have a meaningful relationship if they get lots of alone time, this is a huge red flag.
Tell them they can spend time with you present (and only if they’re able to remain non-abusive), or not at all. Then enforce the rule.
The thing that matters most when you become a parent is protecting your kids. You cannot succeed at anything else until your kids are safe. It’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
The most dangerous animal in nature is a mother with cubs. Fuck with her at your own risk.
Don’t let patriarchy snuff that out of you.
Protect your kids, even if it negatively affects other relationships.
Protect your kids, even if it disrupts date nights.
Protect your kids no matter what.
You do not have a right to allow your difficulties with setting boundaries expose your kids to abuse.
If you need permission to keep that potentially abusive person away from your kids, this is it.
This rings so true. It is shockingly common to hear someone complain about their emotionally abusive parent who tries to undermine their own parenting at every turn, followed by "but... they'll be sad if we don't let them take our kids for the weekend." Or whatever it is. Because we are socialized to value our elders more than our kids.
I recently had a choice to make about whether to send my tween to visit his grandparents (my in-laws) who live in a very cool and educational place. It could be a great experience for him (in theory), at minimal cost to us. I also know that my MIL has said emotionally manipulative and traumatizing things to my husband since he was a kid that have scarred him his whole life, and that both grandparents have undermined our parenting decisions to our kids without us there. So I ultimately chose not to let him go, and also I still feel guilty about it.
THANK YOU.
I belong to a Facebook group specifically designed for parents deconstructing from fundamentalist religion. Naturally, it's like 95% women. And SO MANY of these women complain endlessly about their horrific parents/grandparents/spouses who hurt their kids and AT THE SAME TIME will end their posts with, "Please don't be mean about my parents. Please be respectful to my parents..."
And if you DARE to call them out for it, the aggression is real. They are definitely being abused and they definitely don't deserve that, but I hate it when they truly can't admit it and just want everyone else to join them in their awful world so they can be comfortable now that they have some nominal power as an adult. My mom played that card.
Very hard truth: Your abuse is not an excuse to drag others into the hurt.