I agree.
Pretending child abuse and neglect doesn’t exist, minimizing it, avoiding it, denying it, excusing it……. is not helping in any way.
People can harp on about compassion for abusive people, and forget the greater compassion needed for the child victims and keep perpetuating abuse in the process. Choose to believe they don’t intend to harm children, but that does not help children being abused and the physical and mental health lifelong issues it creates.
I am over people making excuses for those who intentionally abuse children.
I am over society pretending child abuse and neglect are okay, because we can’t upset people by telling them the truth.
I am over religious people condoning child abuse, in all the many forms it is condoned, enabled, encouraged.
Children don’t have a voice, and need mature, compassionate adults to be a voice.
October 2, 2015 at 1:45 am
Totally this! Society allows (and often encourages) parenting that punishes children unfairly, and doesn’t respect their needs as human beings. It also supports parents with serious mental health problems, while ignoring the children dependent on those parents. We should be helping everyone: The parents in need of support, but, most importantly, the children who did not choose to be children of parents who could not care for them well enough to meet their needs. The needs of children need to be taken seriously. The ACE study proves it indubitably. Children need to be put first.
Also, this reminds me of something Brené Brown wrote:
“Empathy is not finite, and compassion is not a pizza with eight slices. When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There’s more.”
My point here is that we can have compassion for the difficulties of parents, without having to ignore the needs of their children. We may not make the decisions that parents want, but we can understand that they aren’t to blame for their actions, without the need to make excuses and ignore the welfare of children.
October 2, 2015 at 7:19 am
I agree with you to a point. There are parents however, who deliberately harm and abuse their children too. So, yes we can indeed blame them for their actions.
Generalising all parents as ‘unintentionally’ harming their children, is not wise.
But, the children in all cases need to come first and be the priority.
❤
October 2, 2015 at 3:52 pm
Yes, we can definitely blame anyone who deliberately harms a child.
October 2, 2015 at 5:50 pm
Tonette Walker & her husband Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin are extreme right wing nuts who have destroyed many lives. He viciously destroyed the working middle class with his policies.
He currently has only a 35% approval rating. He is so awful that the voters forced a recall election (which rarely happens in USA) to get rid of him.
Tonette & her husband believe gay people will burn in hell and all the other toxic awful things extreme right wing people believe.
I don’t for a minute believe she cares about child abuse. It’s all a political ploy to advance her husbands career by making them seen empathetic. Right wing nuts do this all the time in USA.
So I dismiss her article as nothing more than political campaigning. Your post , however , was great as always.
October 2, 2015 at 6:40 pm
I didn’t know any of that. This post was one Nadine Burke Harris re-tweeted on her Twitter account and she is someone I admire.
I am absolutely not okay with religiously abusive people, or those abusing LGBTIQ people, so I will look into this.
Thank you for letting me know Jules. As I am not in US, I don’t always know the background of high profile people.
Researching these people right now.
❤