Posted by daisym on November 16, 2005, at 19:08:25
In reply to Re: Its called DENIAL » daisym, posted by jammerlich on November 16, 2005, at 14:50:44
It is never my intention to minimize someone else's pain...never. And I struggled with how to post in this thread without it sounding like I was defending anyone who either abused a child or looked the other way.
But...the question posed wasn't "how could a mother look the other way?" it was (paraphrased) "how could she not know?" Like most things in life, there is no universal answer to this question. Do I think the evidence (as discussed above) indicated something was wrong? Sure. In that specific case, it seems that the mother didn't ask questions. We can speculate that her motive was she didn't want to know. It is horribly painful either way -- to have her know and do nothing, or to have her not be tuned in enough to know.
I think there are situations where mothers are struggling with their lives, their marriages, their jobs, their self-esteem and don't pay attention to much else. I'm not saying it is right. And there are people who don't pick up subtle signs, they might not have any experience with this type of thing, they might not be very smart, or they just are sort of obtuse. We've all met people like that, right? Just because you become a mother doesn't mean you magically transform into someone who is empathetic, observant and attuned. Lots of people have children who shouldn't. And lots of people love their children a great deal and still aren't good at parenting. Most of the parents I know want to do what is best for their children. They don't always know what is best. And how many times did we, as children, do things that our mothers never knew about? Trust is a powerful blindfold.
I just wanted to try to balance things a little here by bringing in the possibility that a mother REALLY might not know. Especially mothers of those of us over 30 or 35 (I'm 43) -- this stuff was NEVER talked about. There weren't magazines around that listed the signals children give off, there weren't talk shows or movies about this. This stuff happened to other people, to "bad" families. And it was pretty unthinkable for a woman to get a divorce, especially if she had children, before the 1970s. There were no mandatory reporting laws, either for schools or for therapists. And even today, who looks at their husband and believes he is capable of such a thing?
My point is that csa might not be as easy to see as we as children thought it was. Did my mother know? I will emphatically answer, if she didn't, she should have. And if she did know, she should have done something. But I can't dismiss the possibility that she just didn't see it.
Again -- not excuses for not doing anything. Just asking you to allow for the possibility that some parents (mom or dad) just don't know what is really going on. And a final thought -- how come dads aren't held as accountable when moms (or grandpa or uncle Joe)abuse kids?
poster:daisym
thread:578834
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051107/msgs/579421.html