We have to opportunities for a good parent-child relationship. One is when we have marvelous parents who love us and adore us, and so who are there for us in just the right ways. The other is when we are parents; and get to love and adore our children, and so to be there for them in all the right ways. If perchance things flounder in the case of the first opportunity, we nonetheless have the second opportunity to make sure that things go right. This, in a nutshell, is Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s view about parenting. Simplistic brilliance wonderfully recommends her line of thought.
Of course, there is considerable subtlety to her view. However, I should like to focus upon one very rich and powerful and, at the same time, demanding implication of view.
It is not uncommon to hear a caller to the Dr. Laura Program in deep agony over the fact that the fist opportunity for a good parent-child relationship was a very unhappy one. These are often cases where the mother has remarried and the stepfather regularly commits acts of sexual abuse against one or more of the mother’s (biological) children. What is more, the mother knows that this is going on. The fact of the matter is that it is usually the mother who tolerates this sort of moral horror.
In any case, there can be no greater indication of just how important parenting is than the fact that often enough the caller is still searching for a way to have a warm relationship with her or his mother notwithstanding the systematic abuse that the mother allowed.
I roundly agree with Laura Schlessinger that any parent who allows for one of her or his children to be systematically sexually abused thereby loses her or his parent card.
What particularly impresses me, though, is Dr. Laura’s point that there is a way of healing or, at any rate, putting the pain in the background. Her view quite simply is that people who have endured such a horrific past would do much better in terms of psychic healing if they made sure that they were among the best and loving parents ever to walk the face of the earth than if they spent all of their time grieving over the pain of the past.
Dr. Laura is profoundly right in that even if the parent who allowed for such moral horror were to do a complete moral-turn-about and was contrite and repentant in every conceivable way, such a transformation on the part of the parent, as wonderful as it may be, would not in fact erase the abuse of the past. Nothing will erase that. There is no amount of saying “I love you” to an adult child that can erase the systematic abuse that the person endured as a child.
I repeat: Not even repentance will undo the damage that was done.
I have emphasized that point because it is so very clear that what is wanted is a way of undoing the damage that is done or, in any case, a way of diminishing it. More accurately, what is wanted is a way of minimizing the pain left by the wrong done.
Dr. Laura’s sublime point is simply that people who have been abused have more power than they realize to bring about an extraordinary measure of moral healing in their lives. It suffices that they stop looking to the past to heal and start looking to the future in order to do so.
What this means quite explicitly is that in some instances the very best thing that an adult who was abused as a child can do is simply sever all ties with the parents who allowed such abuse, given that the parents have shown no signs whatsoever of being repentant. What seems like a most drastic measure proves to be a remarkable source of strength precisely because the individual stops being hostage to the futile hope that the parent who allowed the abuse will somehow make things better. Maintaining any sort of relationship with the parent is to keep one’s self hostage to that futile hope.
Notice the language here. By maintaining any sort of relationship with the parent, it is the adult (who was the victim as a child) who keeps herself or himself hostage to a futile hope. Thus, it is that very adult who stands as a formidable impediment to her or his own happiness.
In this respect, the parent-child relationship is rather unusual. You see, in most other cases we shoulder some of the blame for the mess in which we found ourselves, as we refused to heed this or that warning or even to acknowledge commonsense itself. And when there is significant damage, that damage is always a reminder of our recklessness.
Not so with being born or being sexually abused by a parent. In no way in either case is a child at fault. There may be scars. However, those scars are not a reminder of the child’s own wrongdoing. The perpetrator was entirely another person. And while none of us can walk away from ourselves, each of us can walk away, thereby severing all ties, with an individual who is an every single way morally responsible for the harm that we have suffered. A parent who allowed her or his child to be sexually abused is just such a person. Better to choose to walk away from such a parent and become morally whole than to choose to maintain ties with the parent who is an inescapable reminder of the damage that the individual endured. The is tantamount to refusing to do what most wish they could do, namely entirely walk away from the damage. Moral healing can indeed be a matter of courage. So it is when it means walking away from one’s parents forever. That, however, is precisely what such parents deserve.