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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is a whole thread exemplifying why we need to LISTEN to women when they say they don't want kids or don't want any more kids, esp for mental health reasons. Sometimes they are wisely judging that they could not handle it. I would like to think I'm incapable of the horrible abuses in this thread but I'd bet a lot of the abusive mothers thought they were, too, until they lost it under stress. [/quote]

In my experience with my own abusive mother and seeing child abuse as an advocate/attorney in the child welfare system, this is not the problem. Most child abusers don’t have the insight to recognize that they are abusers. Many have very strong narcissistic traits or are outright NPDs.

My mother firmly believed to her dying day that she was a wonderful mother, despite having three children estranged from her for many years prior to her passing. She WAS very good at clothing us, cleaning us, feeding us (regularly, but admittedly a fairly crappy diet of mostly processed foods because she loathed cooking), keeping us housed and getting us to school. But in terms of emotional support she was beyond abysmal - failed to protect us from our very abusive father and abused us herself both verbally and physically. Thinks she did a great job and her estranged kids were ungrateful jerks. Whatever.

The truth is that most women who don’t want children don’t want them because they were abused and fear perpetuating the toxic dysfunction they grew up in. They *want* children, but fear harming them. Then there are women who don’t want children because they just don’t yearn for motherhood - but still enjoy other people’s children and are capable of treating those children with loving kindness. Definitely some women don’t want children and have them to please others, but that doesn’t excuse abuse. Most child abusers are seriously messed up psychologically - you would have to be to endlessly demean and/or beat on a child - but they have zero insight and so don’t believe their behavior is wrong. [/quote]

PP here, I didn't mean to suggest that anything excuses abuse. I personally have had to overcome anger issues/a quick temper and having a kid exacerbated it, so I thought perhaps some of these stories could be an extreme version of women who didn't deal with those issues.[/quote]

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