'You Look Just Like Your Daddy' - Emotional and Physical Abuse by Vengeful Mothers
'You Look Just Like Your Daddy' - Emotional and Physical Abuse by Vengeful Mothers
We rarely discuss the boys who are mistreated because they resemble the men who hurt their mothers.
"You look just like your daddy" is a precursor to emotional and/or physical abuse and this mother details her sadistic pleasure in beating and tormenting her son for revenge.
This is a clip from an old episode of The Steve Wilkos Show where a mother publicly admits how she not only physically abused her child starting from when he was an infant but how much she enjoyed doing so with a smile on her face.
When her child was 6 months old, she taped his mouth shut and then put him in a closet because he "was getting on her nerves" due to his crying. She would find reasons to smack him in the face for smiling or laughing and demand that he should sleep in the trash because he was trash.
She details even worse abuse until about the age of 5 and how she would beat him even more when he would attempt to fight back. Despite this horrible admission of something so abhorrent, she provides us with a rare glimpse into the mind of the vengeful parent.
Her reasoning for going against everything that would appear natural to a mother, like protecting her child and nurturing them with love, was because her child's father emotionally hurt her by leaving her to raise a child by herself (as she puts it).
In addition, her child became her preferred punching bag because she was being physically abused as well, and the father later in the episode admits there were some physical altercations between them. As she stated, "Everybody was beating on me, so I could beat up on him."
She does not see her son as a precious child who is dependent on her care for survival but instead as "his child" who is a nuisance in her life. But the most revealing statement was when she said she could have kept abusing him because no one knew or suspected abuse was happening.
Single-parent home situations are not only vulnerabilities for children when it comes to a non-biological adult having access to them but also easier to hide child abuse by abusive parents.
Because we see mothers as safe and nurturing, we don't typically suspect abuse is occurring and we rationalize the verbal attacks. I've learned that it's all in their voice and how they talk to their children because hatred for them is hard for them to hide.
They tend to talk to their toddlers like grown men they're disappointed by and are overly angry by normal child-related inconveniences. If they're willing to curse out their child in public, you can only imagine how much worse it is for them in private.
I remember one situation when I was walking down a residential street and this woman was yanking on the arm of her child who could barely walk and shouting "Hurry Up!" and "You always do this!" It was as if she was yelling at the man he resembled and likely hated.
I cannot imagine growing up to suffer the consequences of what my father had done simply for existing yet this is the reality for many boys. Throughout the years, I'd heard stories of young men detailing their verbal abuse except they'd minimize it as being "normal".
They believe it's normal because they heard it their entire lives and worse, they know other young men who heard the same thing. "You ain't sh*t," "You'll never amount to anything," and "You're just like your daddy & he ain't sh*t either," were common verbal blows to their esteem.
There are jails across this country filled with men who were raised by selfish & vengeful mothers who saw their children as burdens & made them pay daily for their existence. They were verbally & physically abused in public yet everyone saw it as "tough love" & never stepped in.
Maybe we should be more mindful of this behavior and stop rationalizing it. When you hear a mother talk to their child like an ex-lover, maybe that's your clue that something is wrong.
Whatever bad act she's willing to do in public against her child, it'll be worse in private.
I live in a city with a public-transit system, which I have used almost every day for years. Not every week but often enough, I witness young white women waiting for transit (often blond and obese) with preschool-aged biracial sons. These mothers are sometimes extremely verbally abusive to their children in public, usually using phrases containing "N" and "F" words, sometimes even "MF." Whenever I witness this, I think, "If you didn't want a biracial child, why did you have an intimate relationship with a black man?" The verbal cruelty of these mothers is astounding (especially considering that the children are so young), but understanding that they may be projecting feelings for absent fathers puts this behavior in context. Nonetheless, it is NEVER excusable.
"Because we see mothers as safe and nurturing." I don't see mothers, by default, as safe and nurturing. Many are and many aren't, and many women (and men) should never have children. When I was 7/8-yrs-old there were some neighbor girls my age that I hung around. When they would play with dolls I would just watch for a bit because I had zero interest in pretending this ugly plastic thing was a real baby. I observed they seemed to be faking and modeling appropriate "feminine" behavior, but I detected a cold detachment in their rituals. The idea that all females have certain qualities, and all males have certain qualities is a simplistic idea. We can generalize behaviors for both sexes, but we need to remember we aren't bees with specific jobs in the hive. That woman in the video, in spite of her very feminine appearance, should never have control over a child or a helpless pet. This reminds me of the Sandusky child abuse scandal, and the coach/football player that walked into a locker room on a rape in progress. He turned and walked away, leaving that 10-yr-old on his own. We later learned that many other men knew or suspected what was going on, but the hysteria raised in defense of these men (and Sandusky's wife) that looked away was due, imo, to the simplistic belief that all men with muscles are protectors. People would or could not come to grips with the cognitive dissonance.