Reluctant Parents and Child Abuse

This is a follow-up to my previous post.  I just had a few more questions for Grok.

For people who do not really want children, or who are ambivalent about having children, why do they then have children anyway?

People who are genuinely strongly childfree, that is, I never want children, full stop, very rarely end up having them intentionally.  When it does happen despite that stance, it is usually due to extreme external overrides, contraception failure plus refusal/pressure against abortion, religious/cultural mandates that forbid contraception/abortion, or very controlling family/partner dynamics.

Far more commonly, the people who didn't really want kids / were ambivalent / weren't sure and then had them anyway fall into several overlapping categories. These are drawn from personal accounts, sociological patterns, psychological studies on parental regret, and common real-world reporting.

Here are the most frequent reasons:

1.  Partner pressure or relationship compromise

One partner, usually but not always the woman, is lukewarm/against, the other really wants kids, then the ambivalent/reluctant one concedes to keep the relationship/marriage.  Many people view having kids as a non-negotiable part of a lifelong partnership in their social circle.

2.  Accidental pregnancy plus it's too late to terminate

Contraception fails, they discover the pregnancy relatively late, or they go back and forth until past the point where abortion feels feasible, emotionally, legally, logistically, or morally for them.  Once the baby is born, abstract I don't want kids often turns into concrete love/attachment to this child.

3.  Societal/family/cultural/religious expectations

Strong pronatalist pressure:  You'll change your mind, Who will take care of you when you're old?, parents/grandparents begging for grandchildren, religious communities viewing childlessness as failure or sin, or simply it's just what people do.  Many people absorb this so deeply they override their own ambivalence.

4.  Ambivalence itself plus why not? reasoning

They are not strongly against children, they are neutral/fence-sitters.  Life progresses (stable job, house, age pressure, friends all having kids), so they think maybe it won't be so bad, everyone says it's different when it's yours, or I don't have a better plan for my life.  Biological clock anxiety or fear of future regret, What if I regret not having them?, often outweighs the current reluctance.

5.  Change of heart after the fact; sometimes genuine, sometimes post-hoc rationalization

A meaningful minority do report that once the child arrived, their feelings shifted dramatically and they became glad they did it.  Others say they love the child deeply but would not choose parenthood again if they could rewind.

6.  Lack of access to reliable long-term contraception or abortion

In many parts of the world, and increasingly in some U.S. states post-2022, people who would prefer to remain childfree simply cannot prevent pregnancy reliably over decades, or cannot safely terminate if it happens.

Regret rates among parents who were ambivalent or mildly opposed beforehand appear substantially higher than among those who actively wanted children from the start.  Studies and anonymous forums show recurring themes of burnout, loss of identity/autonomy, financial strain, and resentment, especially when external pressure, rather than internal desire, was the main driver.

In short:  Very few people who are truly certain they never want children end up as parents by choice.  Most of the cases you notice are people who were somewhere between meh and probably not rather than a hard no, and then life, love, pressure, accidents, or inertia tipped the scale.

Are the people who really did not want children, or even ambivalent about it, more likely to engage in child abuse?

Abusive Family Dynamics and Childhood Fear

Let's chat with Grok about child abuse

In families with abusive parents, is it common for the children, years later as adults, to have little or no relationship with each other?

Yes, it is quite common for adult children from families with abusive parents to end up with little or no relationship with their siblings, though it is not universal — some siblings become very close as allies against the abuse, while others drift apart or become fully estranged.

Several well-documented patterns explain why estrangement often happens in these families:

• Conflicting narratives about the abuse — Siblings may remember or interpret childhood events very differently.  One might recognize the parent's behavior as abusive and choose to distance themselves (or confront it), while another minimizes, denies, or rationalizes it to preserve a relationship with the parent.  This frequently leads to dueling family narratives, where parents encourage siding with them, pitting siblings against each other.  Research and clinical observations show this is a major driver of sibling estrangement, often as collateral damage when one sibling estranges from the abusive parent(s).
  
  
• Parental favoritism, scapegoating, or triangulation — Abusive or dysfunctional parents commonly favor one child, the golden child, while scapegoating another, or they triangulate by playing siblings off each other for control.  This breeds resentment, jealousy, and division that persists into adulthood.  Favoritism is repeatedly cited as one of the top causes of adult sibling estrangement.
  
  
• Trauma responses and coping differences — Growing up with abuse can lead siblings to adopt different survival strategies.  Some become enmeshed with the parent or repeat dysfunctional patterns, while others seek healing and distance themselves from anything reminiscent of the toxic environment — including siblings who remain tied to it.  This can result in emotional disconnection, even without overt conflict.
  
  
• Ripple effects from parent-child estrangement — Many cases of sibling estrangement stem indirectly from an adult child cutting off, or being cut off by, an abusive parent.  The sibling who maintains contact with the parent may feel pressured to align against the one who left, or loyalty conflicts make ongoing contact too painful.

Broader context shows family estrangement, including siblings, affects a significant portion of people — some surveys suggest around 27% of Americans are estranged from at least one relative — and abuse or severe dysfunction is a frequent underlying factor.  In abusive homes, sibling bonds can be complicated by additional layers like sibling abuse, which is surprisingly common and often overlooked, or simply the lack of a healthy model for conflict resolution and emotional support.

That said, it is not inevitable.  In some families, siblings bond tightly over shared survival and remain supportive into adulthood.  Outcomes depend on factors like birth order, personality differences, the severity/type of abuse, and whether any siblings pursue therapy or recovery work.

Regarding "Conflicting narratives about the abuse" is the problem that different siblings deny the abuse or is it that they deny the long term effects of the abuse?  Also, what about the problem that one sibling may have been abused more than others?

The Satisfaction of Estrangement

Wallowing contentedly in our self-indulgent satisfaction

Even if estrangement is well-deserved, and I know it often is, no one is happy about it.  I have read hundreds of pieces on estrangement from all sides involved.  And I have been somewhat surprised to learn that it is a bit of an epidemic in the United States.  Which of course means that sometimes there are good reasons, but more often than not, the reasons are, what?  I suppose questionable.

But here's the thing, good or bad, there are always reasons.  No one up and decides, nope I'm done with the family, time to cut them off, for no reason.  And further, the estranged must believe that their reasons are unresolvable.

So we have estrangement.  And there are unresolvable issues behind it.  And we are not happy about it.  Of course we are not happy.  Losing your family is not a happy ordeal or ongoing experience.

But if we are only unhappy, we could and would attempt to fix it.  Why be unhappy?  Why be unhappy, when we can do A, B, and C, to make ourselves happy, or a least less unhappy.

So why don't we?

Because it is not the question of happiness that sustains and maintains estrangement; rather, it is satisfaction.  We may not be happy, but we are satisfied.  We are satisfied with the status quo because the status quo ante was so much worse and we see no hope for a different or new status.

And notice this, everyone involved is satisfied.  If there is but one involved person who is dissatisfied, that person will work for reconciliation.  They may do so openly, or they may do so discreetly.  But they will make the effort.  It is only satisfaction that inhibits this.

So estrangement is a state of unhappy satisfaction.  Personally, I think that is so much worse, and more hopeless, than mere unhappiness.

We are all wallowing contentedly in our own self-indulgent satisfaction.  Many of us lack introspection and self-reflection; the worst of us are smugly complacent about the whole thing.

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Parental Comportment

Be careful with children

If you cannot bring the necessary level of care and comportment to the mission and responsibility of raising children, best not to attempt it.

I really have no patience for anyone who says, Well times have changed.  Or parenting has changed.  This is just common sense.  If you do not want to behave properly with children, fine.  Just don't have them.

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Damage

Consigned to a solitary existence

Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime.

Thus far in my writings on this topic, I have focused on description and history.  For me, these writings have served as a sort of alternative therapy.  Long delayed and avoided, but finally engaged.  And they have helped me; the writing process has helped me.

But given the fact that I did not really start this journey of self-discovery until after the age of fifty, there were decades where the internalized and suppressed damage affected everything I touched.  Education, career, marriage, all other relationships, just everything.

Now, my family will argue that, with these writings, I have failed to take responsibility for my own actions and decisions.  Let me put that to rest here, in what I hope will be my final essay in this series.  Yes absolutely, I am responsible for my failures and shortcomings.  All of them.

I was unprepared and incomplete, and ultimately I am responsible for these shortcomings.  I should have and perhaps could have addressed this at a much earlier age.

I certainly could have distanced myself from my parents decades earlier.  It was a relationship that often appeared healthy and normal, but only because I forgave their past transgressions.  I thought that was the right thing to do.  I once read that becoming a healthy adult starts with forgiving your parents.  So I did that.  For more than thirty years.

It was a mistake.

In the long run, I struggled with the expected, my parents' expectations, which I never met, and they devalued me for it.  Their's was a conditional love.  The disapproval and disappointment and depreciation built up over the decades until it all inevitably burst.  By this time, I was fifty-two years old.

And that was just the start of my journey.  I still remember the date, Wednesday, 29 May 2019.  That was when, finally, belatedly, I asked...Why?  The writings in this collection have been my attempt to answer that question.  But by this age, the consequences were insurmountable.  So while my mental health has improved, I struggle everyday with the consequences.

I addressed the expected consequences in The Shadow, the very first essay in this collection.  It is the most important piece I have written on this topic, even though I have never been completely satisfied with it.  I never felt that it adequately captured the damage.

Maybe that is simply not possible.  I cannot fully elucidate the damage; it is just too bleak and depressing.  But my life today is a simmering synthesis of it all.  And today, my family looks down on me for my struggles and my failures.  My parents enjoy complete impunity for their unacknowledged derelictions.  As I have written previously, parental impunity is the hallmark of our family.

My siblings have shorter memories and benefited from marginally more reasonable parents.  This helped them meet the required parental expectations.  So their family unit remains intact.  Such as it is.

As a child I was consigned to a lifelong solitary existence.  And to this day, I struggle with depression and underdeveloped self-esteem and deeply-seated latent anger, and all of the failings I first described in The Shadow.  This is the answer to my Why.  These damages are still present, but at least today I recognize them for what they are and where they came from.  But they have cost me everything.

It was only after I began this journey that I was able to form just one altogether healthy relationship.  My wife's unconditional love sustains me.  It is all I have.  It is no exaggeration to say that she saved my life.  But my death would give my parents a final out.  They would say, as they surely do already, well he was always troubled.

No, I was not troubled.  I was damaged.

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Nails and Leaves

A short story

I remember once, in my early forties, I went to visit my parents, for the weekend.

This was before I was willing to admit what my father was.  I remember telling my sister, at some point, that our parents were terrible to their minor children, but decent to their adult children.  And pretty much, this was still my view that weekend.

There was nothing special about the time we spent together that weekend; I don't even remember it.  I only remember my departure.  I was gathering my things, loading them into the car.  My father was sort of waiting outside.  I come out, ready to go, and I find him picking up leaves in the front yard, one at a time.  No rake, no leaf bag, nothing.  Just one leaf and then another until he had a handful which he threw off to the side of the yard behind a retaining wall.

"Should I fetch you a rake?"  The garage was maybe twenty feet away.  He did not say anything.  We were waiting for my mother to come out to see me off.

Finally he said, "I once had a client..."  I don't remember the name he gave, but it was a name I had heard before.  So for the sake of this story, let's call him Charles Smith.

He continued, "Charlie once told me about an afternoon when he was visiting one of his construction projects."  It seemed Charles Smith was an extremely wealthy, self-made man with a portfolio of real estate assets.

Anyway, Charlie was visiting a construction site, and the workmen were finishing up for the day.

But Charlie was lost in thought, and one of the younger workmen, says to him:  "Mr. Smith, there's really no need for you to be picking up nails like that.  You are a busy and wealthy man, surely you know that we'll take care of that for you."

Now remember, I am standing in my father's driveway and he is in the front yard picking up leaves, one at a time, while he is telling me this story.

He continues, "Charlie only smiled at the young worker, but did not say anything."

It was only later when recounting this story to my father that Charlie added, "You know Reuben," my father was also Reuben...

"I just knew that the young man could never understand my thoughts."  Charlie was, after all, an intellectual, a man of the world, and very successful, and the young worker was just a young worker.  So while Charlie was picking up nails, one at a time, he was lost in thoughts only God knows.

The point is, Charlie did not want to explain this to the worker, maybe even could not explain, or maybe even thought that the young worker had no thoughts of his own.  Certainly nothing of substance.  In any case, the young worker could never understand a man like Charlie.  Obviously not.

But lost in his own ruminations, I doubt Charlie thought about any of this in the moment.  I would guess it was sometime later that he considered his encounter with the young worker.  Maybe only when he shared the story with my father.

The young worker just saw an old man shuffling around picking up nails.  And reacted accordingly.  Charlie did not correct him.  Why bother?

I mean, what does Warren Buffett think about while he's out walking his dog?  And what do the rest of us think about?  The answer to the second question anyway is:  Something less.

Now some people are smart enough to realize that this is not necessarily true.  Buffett could be thinking that it's cold in Omaha and his dog has yet to do his business.  And others could be thinking about their recent cancer diagnosis.

There's a smugness at the heart of Charlie's thinking.  Yes, Warren Buffett may be thinking about what to do with his real estate sales empire in the age of a mature internet.  And the rest of us are probably not.  But we all have our concerns.

So we are standing there, my father and me.  And my father is picking up leaves, one at a time, and telling me this story about Charlie and the young worker who could never understand.  Charlie, it seems, had the good grace, not to share his thoughts about the young worker with the young worker.  If for no other reason, I don't believe that Charlie had yet had any thoughts about the worker.

But by picking up leaves, one at a time, and telling me Charlie's story, my father was simply putting his own smugness on full display for my benefit.  As if I, like the young worker, could never understand the vastness of a great man's thoughts.  And further, I could never understand why someone would busy themselves picking up nails or leaves, one at a time, while lost in such vast contemplations.

It would be another ten years before I finally cut ties with the man.  I still remember the day, it was a Wednesday afternoon, two days after Memorial Day.  By then I was in my early fifties, thirty years too late to have any sort of meaningful impact.  And what kind of impact was I looking to make anyway?

No, I cut contact because I was just tired of it.  I had had enough.

See, mistakenly, I had forgiven my parents for the childhood abuse, and their active and willing, and ultimately successful, attempts to rob me of my self-esteem, at the age when it really matters.  The beatings and the humiliations.  And the shadow this casts over a lifetime; the depression.  It was unearned forgiveness; forgiveness without responsibility or remorse.  Because no one wants to lose their family.

But that smugness, that is what finally ended our relationship.  To return to that weekend's departure, was my father pondering some great question?  Or was he simply thinking about a quirky story one of his wealthy clients told him about distractedly picking up nails?  I will never know, but Charlie's understated hubris would have appealed to my father.

So at that late date, ten years after that weekend and one month short of my fifty-second birthday, I was finally willing to admit what my father was:  A smug brute who fancied himself an intellectual.

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Six Rules for Parents

Articles on parenting often include rules for children.  That's fine, and so they should.  But here's a list of rules for parents.  These are absolute.

1. If you do not want children, do not have children.  Think about this in advance.
   
   This is the first rule of parenting and is far and away the most important.  It is certainly the most important rule my own parents ever taught me.  The problem here is that most people do not think about this in advance.  Ask yourself two questions:  Do I want children?  And, what kind of parent would I be?  Do be honest.
   
   
   
2. Do not hit your children.  Do not even think about beating them.
   
   If you would not swat a dog, how can you believe that beating a child is okay?  This is baffling to me.
   
   
   
3. Self-esteem is a vital part of a child's development.  If you disregard self-esteem, it is the worst form of child abuse.
   
   Parents who place self-esteem above all else are misguided.  But parents who completely disregard self-esteem do not attend to the most basic responsibilities of parenting:  Raising strong, productive, and mentally and emotionally healthy adults-in-the-making.  These people have no business raising children at all.
   
   
   
4. Do not have children to serve your own vanity.
   
   Your children are not a scorecard.  If you seek some form of reputational advantage for yourself because of the accomplishments or behavior of your children, you are not doing your job.  Further, see number two; but if you beat your children in front of others, in order to maintain or enhance your reputation, you are a monster.
   
   
   
5. In the age-old debate between nature and nurture, a parent should take the position that everything is nurture.  Short of physical illness, you are responsible for everything.
   
   Parents let themselves off the hook by blaming nature.  Take responsibility.
   
   
   
6. If your children fail to live up to your expectations, you are one hundred percent responsible for this failure.
   
   There is no room for debate on this.  Either your expectations were misguided or you failed to provide your child with the proper tools to meet those expectations, or both.  Maybe you even hindered your child's success by violating the above rules?

I think this list is particularly relevant for parents who have estranged children.  Before you blame your child or external factors, you should ask yourself:  Did I violate one or more of these rules?  And even if you disagree with these rules, as irresponsible parents most certainly will, you should still ask this question.  It might shed some light on your situation.

Now a list of rules for parents could be endless.  But every additional rule that comes to mind seems to be derivative of one or more of these six.

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How to Break a Seven-Year-Old

It's time to talk about Pascal

Round about the time I was twelve or thirteen, my parents decided that it would be a good experience, for our family, to have a foreign exchange student come live with us for a year.  And since we three children were all relatively young, they selected a much older, eighteen-year-old, recent high school graduate from Belgium.  He would attend our local high school and simply repeat his senior year.

Now for myself and my younger brother, age eleven, having an eighteen-year-old in the house was a new and exciting experience.  He was older and foreign and cool, and we pretty much worshiped the kid.  Well you would at that age, right?

However, our seven-year-old sister had a vastly different experience.

The problem was really two fold.  First, my sister was a bit chubby and struggled with her self-esteem.  This problem was heightened by the fact that my parents did not give two cents about the self-esteem of their children.  They never did.

Second, this eighteen-year-old was an arrogant narcissist of the most cruel sort, and he mocked and belittled our sister at every chance he got.  This, in itself, was a problem, but it was not the problem.  No, the actual problem was that our parents never, not once, put a stop to it.  You know basic stuff, for instance:  Pascal, we do not speak to nor about a member of this family in such a way.

And the kid was relentless.  Looking back on it, the proper course of action would have been to stop it, and if it could not be stopped, to send him home.  This should have taken mere weeks.

But this was not done.  In fact, nothing was done.  So our sister suffered this bullying from within her own family for a year.  And I think it is only fair to confess, that eleven and thirteen-year-old boys will mimic whatever an eighteen-year-old does in their house.  So instead of contending with just one bully, my sister had to live with three of us.

Now, my brother and I were no where near as bad as Pascal.  We knew our parents would step in if we were.  But we were bad enough, and I'm sure my sister would say we, the three of us, were all the same.  Remember, she was seven.

I don't think my sister ever got over it.  Maybe she has, but we have never discussed it.  But what I know for sure, is that we have never had a good relationship.  Sometimes it has been better than others.  But it has never been normal.

As smart as she is, one mistake my sister has made over the years is that she has always blamed the eighteen-year-old and the thirteen-year-old and the eleven-year-old.  And I'm very sorry for the part I played in this.  But to my knowledge she has never held my parents accountable for their inaction.  Parental impunity has always been the hallmark of our family.  This is their legacy and our long term tragedy.

In any case, my abnormal relationship with my sister is not one hundred percent Pascal's fault.  I would say, perhaps not even mostly his fault.  It primarily stems from the way my parents raised their children.  In an abusive family, the kids either come together, fiercely loyal to one another, or they become divided.  For us, it was the latter.

My theory is that when an abused child is not the current target of abuse, he cannot help but be relieved.  That is, if abuse is bad enough, a young child is simply grateful that it is not him...this time.  It becomes every kid for himself.  This degrades trust, and does nothing for long term family cohesion.

Pascal just fueled this preexisting dynamic.  But he was a monster, and it was something else our sister had to endure.

The internet reports that he died during early Covid.  Naturally, no one in my family shared this with me, even though he died over four years ago.  So-called experts speciously advise estranged families to cut all lines of communication and information; one is simply in or one is out.  This is the choice they have made, as if I am the one responsible for our estrangement.  Somehow they seem to believe that they hold the moral high ground, when I have done nothing but recoil from their behavior.

Anyway, I learned about Pascal's death yesterday.  At the time of his death, he was fifty-nine years old.

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Thanks for Letting Me Know

A short story

The phone rings, which is somewhat strange because no one calls me these days.  It takes me a minute to realize that it is actually the phone making the noise.

I answer:  “Yes?”

“Hey man.”  I hear my brother’s voice.  I have not spoken with my brother in years, so this can only be bad news.

We’re long past small talk.  “Mom died this morning.”  He tells me.

He had emailed me a year earlier, telling me that she had developed some type of cancer.  Then he would occasionally email me one-line updates, but that stopped after a couple of months.

I remember the last time I saw my mother, the year before that.  And the last thing she said to me was that she loved me.  They had come to see me for some reason or other, but did not stay long because they could feel how unwelcome they were.  My father did not say a word the whole time.

Other than that extremely brief visit, I had not seen them for three years.  Not since they had asked me to help them with a house they wanted to buy.  During their long search, they had asked for my advice and I gave them the best counsel I could from a distance.  But the house they ultimately selected was only about forty minutes from me, and I could actually get involved.  I did not seek out involvement in this affair; they asked for my help.

It did not go well.  Oh they got the house and all.  But they behaved shamefully.  Mind you, not towards the seller.  No, shamefully towards me.  I will spare you all the gory details.  But the worst of it was that they decided to put the house under contract for cash, when in fact they did not have the cash available.  That's bad enough.  But they blamed me for the consequences of this bad decision.

Well, that's not actually the worst of it.  The worst of it was their attitude, which was belligerent and condescending all the way through.  Venomous is a better word.  As if I was the one preventing them from doing what they wanted, however irrational it may have been.  Had they not been my parents, I would have withdrawn from the transaction.  As it was, I felt an obligation to see them into the home they wanted.  So that is what I did.

It only cost whatever was left of our relationship.

About three weeks after they closed on the property, they showed up at my house – Uninvited, unannounced, and unapologetic.  I think their goal was to put the bad blood behind us and simply move on.  But there was no explanation and no apology.  Nothing of the sort.  When I complained about their attitude and behavior, all I got was, We’re sorry you feel that way.  That was my mother.  Again, my father did not say a word.

But I was having none of it.  By this time, I did not need an explanation.  I knew who they were.  My parents, with typical self-righteous impunity, tied their supposed love (well, our relationship anyway) to their irrational expectations, including my acceptance of their betrayals and their lies, and of their sheer nastiness and spitefulness and venom.  That is who they were.  That is who they always have been.

Sure my parents loved me.  But it was a conditional type of love.  Conditional on what?  Well, whatever it was they expected at the time.  And if I did not meet their expectations, well there was a price to be paid.  There was always a transaction on the table.

But by this time, I had the strength, or rather the experience, to say:  Oh no you don’t.

You see, by the time they bought that house, I knew unconditional love, belated though it may have been.  I had met someone who would later become my wife.  And in my mid-forties, she became the first person in my life to love me unconditionally.  And now that I had experienced unconditional love, I simply would not tolerate anything less.  Certainly not from people who happened to be my parents.

The effect was explosive.

I had to accept my parent’s conduct and bad faith for what it was:  A termination of our relationship.  No doubt, they would argue that it was not a termination because they still wanted to fix it.  My mother even said:  You may have given up on us, but we've not given up on you.  But words are easy.  There is a level of maltreatment that indicates that you no longer value a relationship and that you have no expectation nor desire to maintain it into the future.

Let me say that again:  There is a level of maltreatment that indicates that you no longer value a relationship and that you have no expectation nor desire to maintain it into the future.

Surely we, all of us, can expect some minimum level of goodwill and behavior.  We owe this to ourselves.  So I just decided that it was time to make their decisions irrevocable.

That was very difficult for me.  But conditional love is all they knew and all they were capable of.

And for my parents?  Well they have other children.  And their own comforting self-righteousness.

Now my parents love their other children conditionally as well.  Like I said, it is the only kind of love they know.  But my siblings are more willing to indulge it than I am.  And no doubt it helps that they have certainly done a better job at meeting parental expectations.

Without my wife, I would still be trying, and failing, to meet their expectations... their conditions.

The transaction on the table.

Their table.

So my wife and I crafted a new table.  And around our table, there is only unconditional love.