An extraordinarily large number of fathers and mothers bully their children. This is one of those well-kept secrets that just barely peeks out in abuse statistics, in the trauma-informed care literature, and in the adverse childhood experiences literature. But it never gets addressed directly. Somehow, it is too simple, too stark, and too horrible to admit that many parents are mean to their children. But they are.
Because I write in the field of “authoritarians in the family,” I receive stories daily from the now-adult children of bullies. These victims just can’t understand why their father and/or mother acted so cruelly. And it is an impossible “why” to answer. What could possibly make a parent despise and mistreat his or her own children?
The usual answer, if there is a usual answer is, “They must have been harmed themselves.” But that begs the question. If someone was beaten as a child, why should that make him want to beat his own children rather than make him vow to never beat them? What about our species makes us meet cruelty with cruelty? Plus, we don’t even know if that’s the correct assumption. What if many bullying parents weren’t themselves harmed in childhood? Then what are we to make of the situation?
Maybe we simply have to bite the bullet and make the sad admission that from the beginning of time until the end of time, family cruelty has happened and is going to continue happening. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and his followers coined the idea of archetypes, those unconscious personae that they speculated existed in every member of our species. Maybe each of us is burdened by the archetype of the bully. Who can say?
If we must make that admission, that cruel parents will always be with us, then the immediate and pressing question that needs answering is, “What can we do about that?” Should we install Big Brother cameras in every household worldwide, a bullying tactic of its own, and ferret out cruel parents and punish them or maybe take their children away—and do what with them? Should we put warning labels on every parent: “This parent may be hazardous to your health”? Given that these parents are also likely to be in charge, since bullies love power and rise to power, what can possibly be done?
What can be done? The same thing without which there would never have been women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, children’s rights or human rights. One lone voice and another lone voice must speak out and together make a shout loud enough to affect the bullies. Bullies do less well when exposed. They aren’t embarrassed or ashamed, as they don’t have that in them, but they are concerned about their public image and they are likely to be a bit constrained by exposure. So, let’s expose them!
Will you speak up? Will you tell your story? You can tell it to me (to [email protected]) and I will share as many as I can in this column. Tell it to a friend. Tell it to your sister or brother. Tell it to your uncle. Tell it in a blog post, academic article, or full-length memoir. If you write, paint, sing, sculpt, or work in any creative medium, turn over a portion of your output to activist art that exposes this particular tyranny. Yes, this can feel dangerous and actually be dangerous. But we would have no personal rights or group rights without risk-takers, whistle-blowers, and rebels.
Bullying parents are legion. There is something in our species that breeds them. But there is also something in our species that breeds good people. Side with the good and speak your truth!
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