The cruel paradox of a parent who wants to defend his or her child

Cruel vademecum of frequent situations if you ask that you, as a mother or father, and your child be protected when you or your child or both are suffering abuse/violence:

If your partner/husband accuses you – using the absurd term worthy of the dark ages – of being “crazy” and therefore of deserving that your child be taken away from you, you do one of two things: you either cry desperately, only to be labelled as depressed, and surely your child cannot stay with a depressed woman, or you steel up and defend yourself, speaking forcefully, and are consequently labelled as cold, and surely your child cannot stay with an unloving mother.

If you ask for help and tell your story, they will say to you: “This is your side of the story and we do not know you, we need to hear the other side as well. It would surely be the exact opposite of what you are telling us. How can a child live in such conflict? The child deserves to be taken away from both of you, for you are both immature and selfish.”

If you tell about episodes of violence – even just verbal – admitting that sadly the child was there to witness them, you are told that witnessing violence is even worse than enduring it directly, so you are guilty of being a bad mother because you took part in a conflict between two spouses/parents. And if you reply that you could not see the violence coming, you are told that a good mother would have prevented the argument from breaking out, so the child cannot stay with a mother who drags her child into a conflict, even if it was intentionally started by the other parent.

If you report your husband to the police, they ask you why did not you come forward before. You were conniving!

If you do not file a report, because you did not do it before, you were an accomplice!

If a child sides with the violent parent, other people will think that the mother/father is surely guilty! No-one thinks that the child may have been manipulated or influenced for reasons that have to be explored case by case.

Needless to say, this can happen to fathers as well!!!!

It takes more effort to look into such situations and to follow them over time. Instead, everything is easily dismissed as “parental conflict” or “madness”, and innocent children pay the highest price for this.

If you experience such terrible situations of powerlessness you must not think that you are alone. These are the plights of our time, when superficiality prevails. You must not stop fighting and seeking concrete help.

Dottssa Stefania Jade Trucchi