I recently came across this tweet and it has spurred some reflections.
Domestic and Family Violence (DFV) is an endemic scourge in our society. It should be widely known that men are the main perpetrators and women and children are the main victims. It's bad, it's terrible, it's demonic. It happens in churches too, even in ministry families. It is -- not to put too fine a point on the issue -- evil!
But if there is one side to DFV that people don't like to talk about, even DFV advocates seem very reluctant to bring this up. That is, women as perpetrators of violence against their own children.
As a child and teenager, my family life was dysfunctional and spasmodically abusive.
My "father" was a right abusive bastard. He was an alcoholic who managed to beat me more times than I dare to remember or recount.
But my mother was equally bad. She was a real Jekyll and Hyde character. She could be the kindest and most affectionate mother a boy could have. However, she also had a very dark side. She could be physically neglectful, emotionally abusive, and a real nasty piece of work. She would do anything to hurt you -- including slapping me in the face, sleep deprivation, or launching a torrent of neglectful behaviors that crossed the line into physical abuse often. (I think, for example, not just of how she would silently encourage my father's physical assaults but also how she would let things slide like cooking meals or cleaning house or doing laundry.)
It pains me to say this, but one of my most vivid memories of my mother is one of physical assault. Her face was contorted in rage because I'd stood up to my father. She was screaming in this shrillest voice, "I hate you!"
There's an old African proverb that the axe never remembers the tree but the tree remembers the axe. We remember the pain of people who hurt us, we store it in our bodies, as it is said, "the body keeps the score".
All that abuse and neglect -- from both parents, but particularly from my mother -- had a deep and detrimental effect on me. For the first 20 or so years of my life, I was convinced that women hated me simply because I existed. I grew up in a socio-cultural, and religious, context in which gender roles were dramatically and clearly defined. All of that has only been most definitely undone over the past decade with my wife.
Every child must wrestle with the fact that his or her parents are fallible. I've had to accept that much of mother's personality and behavior is because she herself was a victim of neglect, abuse and trauma. I try to remember her best and not her worst. And then, in the fullness of time, learn to forgive her.
I know it's not popular. I know it doesn't fit the DFV narrative. I know it's the exception rather than the rule. And I know that the majority of DFV happens at the hands of men. But can we please -- finally -- acknowledge that women are perpetrators, too? Especially against their own children. Because I see it more and more these days. In ways that go unnamed and therefore unresolved.
For example, in her own time and in her own way, it's at the heart of my wife's story, too.