What About the Children?
In 2006 we continue to generally ignore the high cost and importance of child rearing in this country (and of Australian children living overseas) and that translates into the mess society has become and the constant validation of the abusers in the family by many societal systems, especially our courts.
We have to start listening to the children. Consider this example:
“With all the Fatherhood debate raging at the moment, I want to say, as a child of a violent relationship, it’s not contact that makes a father. It’s the ability to look at what is good for the child, what nurtures it.
It’s not saying things that are meant to hurt, and it’s not being blaming, disloyal and cruel about the child’s mother. It’s realising that children grow and change and taking part in assisting the best outcome for the child, not insisting on ‘my turn’. It is not about punishing the child as the only way left to harm the mother. We just want to be loved and accepted by our own parents – is that so hard?
I never had to undergo physical or sexual abuse from my father. God help the children who do. I nearly killed myself because I wasn’t good enough for my own father. I hope this helps explain what it’s like to be a child where an abuser is a parent.
Courts are all that kids have to protect them. Where there is violence by one of the parents, there’s a very good chance the children will live in fear, and, like me, struggle to be ‘a good enough person’. Many don’t make it. There are many drugs, alcohol, bad relationships because of bad fathers.”
Thanks, Kate 2004
