Child Abuse in the News or Mothers and the Modern Media II

If you’ve watched the news lately, I’m sure you’ve come across the recent incidences of child abuse. It’s on every channel. Names such as Nixmary and Andrea Yates conjure up gruesome images of horrid conditions and mothers who go so far as to kill their children. But we can’t leave out the fact that even priests, the ultimate in purity and guidance have been coming out left and right as having sexually abused the very children they were meant to nurture and save from such actions. Then there are the teachers. I think the name Mary Kay LeTourneau can still turn a few stomachs. She’s ‘famous’ for sleeping with her twelve-year-old student whom she had known since he was in second grade. They are now married with children (though I don’t think they have custody).

These stories are in the media so much now it makes me sick. Every paper I pick up has a story of a child brain-damaged from being shaken by an angry parent, molested by a day-care worker, or even dead from parents who refuse to feed them until they behave, or other such nonsense.

The case of Andrea Yates goes back to what I was mentioning before about the ‘Cult of the Mother.’ She is in no way the first to kill her children, nor will she be the last. There is a long list of mothers who ended up taking the lives of those they were supposed to hold dear. These include:

Patricia Blackmon was 29 years old when she killed her two-year-old adopted daughter in Dothan, AL in May 1999.

Debra Jean Milke was 25 when she killer her four-year-old son in Arizona in 1989.

Dora Luz Durenrostro killed her two daughters, age four and nine, and her son, age 8, when she was 34 years old in San Jacinto, California in 1994.

Caro Socorro was 42 years old when she killed her three sons, age five, eight and 11, in Santa Rosa Valley, California in 1999.

Susan Eubanks murdered her four sons, ages four, six, seven, and 14, in San Marcos, California, in 1996 when she was 33.

Caroline Young was 49 in Haywood, California when she killed her four-year-old granddaughter and six-year-old grandson.

Robin Lee Row was 35 years old when she killed her husband, her 10-year-old son and her eight-year-old daughter in Boise, Idaho in 1992.

Michelle Sue Tharp was 29 years old in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania when she killed her seven-year-old daughter.

Franic Elaine Newton was 21 when she murdered her husband, seven-year-old son and two-year-old daughter in Houston, Texas.

Darlie Lynn Routier was 26 in Rowlett, Texas when she killed her five-year-old son.

(Note, all the above were taken from http://crime.about.com/od/female_offenders/a/mother_killers.htm )

Even Brooke Shields and Marie Osmond have admitted to having post-partum and not being able to deal with the feelings they have for their children when they found it wasn’t all love and devotion. I mention these because, most notably with Osmond, they are people that have become icons and especially with Marie, darn near infallible in the eyes of society.

I remember one year when I was maybe, seven years old, my brother and I each got a rabbit. His was a gray male that my brother named Johnny, and mine was a white female I named Snuffy, short for Mr. Snuffleupagus, my favorite Sesame Street character. My mother told me that if she were to get pregnant and give birth, we’d have to separate her from her children.

“But why?” I asked. “How can they live without her?”

“Because,” she responded her gray/blue eyes looking into my hazel ones, “Often times rabbits kill their young.”

I didn’t understand this. I couldn’t see how a mother could kill her child (even if the abuse in my house had started already, for the longest time I felt I deserved if for doing something wrong). But it is all too common in the animal world. In college my roommate and I each bought a goldfish. One gave birth, and we watched in amazement as the cute little fry swum around the tank. The next morning they were all gone, eaten. It’s only natural. So who are we, as humans, to think we are above it all?

The thing is, and I don’t know if this is just a phenomenon in America, we hold ourselves above all beings. Despite being in the same genus as chimps, we are better. We are smarter, we use tools, etc. etc.

Yet we are unable to take a critical look at ourselves and rather than be afraid, step back and see how to change things. We are unable to stop ostracizing people for natural feelings. We are unable to accept that mothers, teachers, and even our religious leaders are imperfect.

I really don’t know what to think about such things. As pertains to myself, I mentioned before how no one listened to me, or wanted to listen to me perhaps because of the view that mothers can do no wrong, sometimes I think it was because they had gone through the same thing themselves. It’s so easy to turn away.

But with this notion of perfection comes an incredible burden. People are denied validation of their feelings. They fear what is natural. If a mother begins to think her child is ugly, isn’t perfect, she can begin to become afraid of her own thoughts. Granted, these are symptoms of a treatable illness, but how public is the knowledge? Isn’t it easier to wallow in self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness than to face the fact that something might be wrong? And isn’t it easier because there just isn’t a prominent belief or understanding that even those that are supposed to be infallible are, in fact, human and face the same diseases and demons as the rest of us?

This is becoming a long post, but it’s something that bothers me. With the case of Nixmary what the media showed was shocking. Here was a little girl that had, by all cases, cried out for help. Everyone seemed to realize after the fact that there were signs. Social Services was called. But no one did anything.

Shock. That was the headline, “A City in Shock.”

Shock (as defined by Dictionary.com): A severe offense to one's sense of propriety or decency; an outrage. As in “numb in shock.’

It’s the numbness in that definition that bugs me. People became numb. There was an immediate outcry for help and reform and then – nothing. Society cries for a solution to the immediate problem, not the root disease, and becomes satisfied with band-aids. Nothing is accomplished except that our communities are stuck together with tape and nothing really changes.

What is my solution? Admit things. Admit it if you are afraid. Admit that you’re scared. And recognize that there is nothing wrong with that. Admit how you feel, accept it, then look for the root cause. Admit that things in the world are messed up but instead of dwelling on the surface grab a shovel and dig deeper. But don’t think that everything is bad, just because there is a lot on the news, or in the paper. Realize that in the U.S. at least ‘news’ is an economic venture, and bad news sells better than good. There is a lot of good in the world, and you can be a big part of it.

Also, see what you can do, even if it is just listening to someone. Often, that is such a healing activity. The elderly are so much livelier when they know someone recognizes their existence and the value of their stories. Children glow when you listen to them talk about their day or tell their fantasies. And by truly hearing what someone has to say, who knows what you’ll discover. I know the more I’ve listened the more I realized I’m not alone in my questioning, in my quest. I’m not the only one who is searching for my identity in a world I don’t understand.

Talk to me, I want to know people’s tales. I want the chance to listen to others as I struggle to find my voice. We can help each other out.

The Modern Perception of Motherhood

I almost started writing about this yesterday, ready to call it “The Cult of the Mother.” The mother is still highly revered in this culture, not that it shouldn’t be. As much as we are (and I live in the U.S.) a patriarchal society motherhood is the ultimate virtue and the mother is the one who sets the morals of society. War is fought by men, and it’s the females who cry out for their sons. Look at the one who camped out at the White House – the moral barometer is the mother.

I don’t know if this starts in religion. There is certainly the image of the Virgin Mary, pure and chaste, the only vessel pure enough to birth the Son of God. But it’s reinforced in the media. We have Mrs. Cleaver, the perfect mother who always catches her sons’ foibles and gently prods them to the right path. Mrs. Brady had her ‘smiling frown’ when her children misbehaved. In media, women were either mother’s or children (think Lucy in I Love Lucy) but filled with this innocence and moral wisdom. Not to mention the constant newscast footage of women crying for their slain children.

There is a reason why it seems to be a recent phenomenon that men can gain custody of their children. It has taken some time to realize there can be such a thing as a ‘bad mother’ despite Joan Crawford’s public image of motherhood. I always identified with her daughter, and called my mother “mommy dearest” for a bit.

But it is still in the public consciousness that mothers cannot be bad, and this has led me to, maybe not get mad at some people, but perhaps lose connections that could have been beneficial to bringing me out of my shell.

See, in college, everyone talks about their family. It’s how they identify themselves. I’m still struggling for my identity, and since I couldn’t find it in my family I have to find it in myself. But that’s a different story.

In terms of mothers, I hated when people would congregate and start talking about their families. I heard tales of mother’s doing the ‘mother-daughter’ teas and being on the PTA. Of mother’s who knew just what to cook when their daughter’s boyfriend broke up with them. Of mother’s who with the band-aids would bring a grape lollipop, or a story. All these wonderful things.

“I can tell my mother anything,” they’d say. “She always knows just what to do.”

And if someone didn’t have a mother, it was a pity party for them. “You poor thing, you are missing so much.”

So what becomes of me? The one who physically has a mother but emotionally doesn’t? The one whose mother is the main antagonist?

I learned that the truth is alienating. The group would turn to me, wide-eyes, ready to hear about the glories of my mother. At first there was honesty, “My mother is evil,” I’d state, unable to put into words her actions. “All she causes is pain.”

“Oh, she just does it because she loves you,” someone would say.

“No,” I’d whisper. “No, she does it because she likes it.”

But so many couldn’t understand. They’d think I’m weird. “Maybe she had a bad childhood” was a common response. Like that explains it. I have had a horrid childhood, but refuse to blame my actions on it. Refuse to continue the cycle, refuse to hurt another living being.

Usually there’d be one person who came up to me afterwards to admit, in private, that their parents beat them too. Of course, they never admitted it in the group. I don’t like ‘secret alliances.’ I’m sick of living in shadows and keeping everything hidden, even in college when I was an angry dark woman.

This makes things hard. People don’t want to hear that the purity of motherhood can be compromised. But see, by obfuscating the truth to preserve some sense of security we are actually undermining ourselves.

I think this issue of not being willing to recognize that not all mothers are the pinnacle of perfection has led to an erosion in our society and has actually harmed, rather than helped, the woman’s movement. It’s only now that post-partum depression is getting the attention it deserved because for so long if the mother was having problems she’d be the failure, not a society that refuses to admit the truth. Living in silence is never the answer. Being afraid to talk for fear of alienation is never the answer.

This is also, I think, a reason why so many children that are abused are afraid to talk. It’s easier to say that your father hurts you. Hell, it’s almost expected. The man is tough, the disciplinarian, and nowadays in the news more for sexual abuse. But not the mother. If the mother hurt you, “you must have really deserved it.”

It’s a sad dichotomy to which I have no answer. I just know that when I tried to voice things about my mother at an earlier age I was shot down by those who just couldn’t imagine a bad mom, or that there wasn’t a reason behind it. Now whenever people talk to me about their children and/or ask for advice my main statement is, “don’t deny their reality.” If your child says something is wrong, listen. If your child doesn’t like the way something feels, listen to them. Don’t tell them the way they feel are wrong. They’ll stop asking, start doubting themselves, and once that happens who knows how far it will spiral.