It is heartbreaking each day to read about babies being injured or killed by their parents and caregivers and I wonder about the mindset of such ones.
Babies are so vulnerable that I do not understand the desire to do things to them that cause them hurt.
I wonder what it is about us, those of us who experienced abuse of all sorts as children that we don’t say to ourselves that we don’t want to visit that kind of hurt or worse to any child of ours.
Children really do live what they learn and it is difficult to show love and caring if that was not your experience. But a great motivator is the pain you felt as a child. You should develop a mindset where you have no desire to bring children into the world if you cannot give them a better and different life than the one you had.
It has to be a conscious day to day effort.
Sure, you’re going to have a tendency to hit, to shout or whatever your experience was, but the distress on your child’s face should also be a motivator to try really hard to not repeat the hurtful actions.
When your child is grown and you have a great relationship with her, you are going to look back with regret at some of the punishment meted out.
If you generally treated your children with respect and displayed love and caring, they will often forgive the punishment especially if you apologize once you realize that even though their punishment was not as extreme as that which you experienced, you really should have used kind loving words rather than slapping them around.
You really have to be mentally, emotionally, and financially ready to have children. And this comes with maturity, which has no particular age. It’s hard to feel loving when you are worried about paying bills and buying food.
There is a disconnect somewhere why so many years after our parents had us with little or no means, young people are still having children without any reasonable ability to take care of them.
What is broken in our consciousness that men are violating months old babies, toddlers, kindergartners, under-aged teens, all persons with no ability to consent?
And for all those women who are supposed to be nurturers, doing some of those same things to them, what’s up with that?
Society has made it a way of life to shine light on the behaviours of consenting adults while the violations of children are shoved under a rug.
Isn’t it a little ridiculous that you can spot a cheater across the street yet you don’t see the husband in your bed that’s violating the kids under your nose? Never mind that he did not father those children, which I think is a justification some men use.
A man once told me that if you have an under-aged daughter and a man shows interest in you, he is using you to gain access to your child.
While I don’t believe that to be always true because there are great step-dads, women need to be more vigilant about the men they bring around their children, boys and girls.
Sometimes, it is okay to bring up your children alone. Maybe they will understand why you and their father are not together, better than why you brought this person into the house who is violating them.
If you were broken as a child by abuse, having a baby is not going to fix you. It is better to shower yourself with all the love and caring you never got as a child.
Get a great education and a career. If you want children, build a base for supporting them so that if the man doesn’t stay, you alone can manage.
Hopefully, in building that base, many years would have passed, maturing you into that person that can love your children to distraction and give them the confidence to go out and conquer the world.