The lifelong effects of childhood abuse

So true. In my case, the abuse I suffered in childhood became the core of who I am, and has always regulated how I relate to others.

My mother’s favourite sayings, which she saved especially for me:
“You’re a little stinker.”
“I wish you had never been born.”
“I’ll knock you into the middle of next week.”
“One of these days, you’ll wake up and find you’re dead.”

MOTHERING and fathering have completely different meanings. Fathering a child involves only supplying the software for baby production. Mothering that child means caring, nurturing, striving to ensure its wellbeing over the years. Whether it’s fair or not, we as children (and even in adulthood) expect more from our mums.

Mine did not live up to those expectations by a long way. She never attempted to hide her dislike of me, was dismissive of my attempts to please her, and far from preventing my father’s abuse of me, she added verbal and physical insult to injury, usually with relish. Her smile was thin-lipped and humourless, she hardly ever laughed, and never, ever offered me hugs or kisses – not once in my entire life, apart from a formal “goodbye” after a visit. She would take offence at the smallest childish slip of my tongue, and would sulk for hours or even days, sometimes accompanied by tears that terrified me as a young child more than the temper.

My brother, four years younger and with huge brown eyes, was her pet, everything to her that I was never allowed to be, and could do no wrong. He worked out very early how to make this work to his advantage and never once let go of the reins. In truth, he didn't need to make much effort to discredit me, as my mother favoured him from the day he was born until the day she died, having disinherited me and left him every penny – even the bequest my father had promised to my daughter, and the amount he and my mother had agreed not long before his death should go to me.

When my brother and I played together as young children, I was the eternal scapegoat for anything that went wrong. If I ever tried to pull rank or criticise him, he would burst into tears and claim I had hit him, which would result in a slap for me from whichever parent happened to be nearby.

My theory of the origin of this very different treatment is grounded in my father’s abusive and controlling personality, of which my mother was naturally the first victim. I wasn’t born until six years after they married, so he had plenty of time to work on her. I remember him always “babying” her, which I later worked out was not because he was solicitous for her comfort, but because she was his creature and he wanted to keep her that way. She had no friends or hobbies of her own and never left the house alone, other than to work. I never once knew her to query his decisions, let alone defy them.

The consequence of this was in many ways inevitable. Having subdued my mother, my father must have been delighted to find himself with an infinitely easier victim, a new baby entirely at his mercy and to be moulded as he chose, and he took full advantage of that. I have no evidence that my mother knew what he was up to in my bedroom at night, but as they shared a room (if not a bed, from the time I was around 10) I find it difficult to believe she didn’t suspect something.

My research has unearthed many cases where a mother resents and mistreats her daughter purely because her husband is abusing the child, and I have reluctantly come to believe this was the case with my mother. Even if she wasn’t aware of his sexual abuse, she still made the choice every single day to effectively permit – actually, to approve – his psychological and physical abuse by not preventing it, and adding to it herself.

But however awful my childhood was, my mother and father did at least set me a great example of how not to be a parent, and accordingly I set out to be as unlike them as humanly possible and am confident I succeeded triumphantly. So there is a silver lining behind even the darkest cloud!