Young people in bad families are battling two dragons at once. One is the abuse, and the other is our society’s age prejudice.
Older teens usually focus on getting themselves out of the abusive situation, but children and younger teens usually seek help from other adults. They seldom find it. They’re more likely to be laughed at for their silly lies. People who weren’t present will confidently claim to “know” that the abuse isn’t real and the abusers are wonderful.
Most children begin by telling someone else in the extended family how their parents really treat them. Grandma or Aunt Jane will then betray the child’s trust, by smirking and tittering at her foolishness or chewing her out for making up such awful things. The child tells another relative or two or three, who repeat the process. The child lacks the understanding to realize that they’re all part of the same sick system and have an interest in preserving it.
Many children give up at that point, but some children may also tell teachers and other adult presences in their lives. That’s when they encounter the other dragon. These people aren’t part of the sick system, but they’re unlikely to care. It’s much, much easier to listen to age prejudice and decide that they’re just silly, stupid children who are telling lies because they’re irrationally mad at their loving, kind parents. A woman reporting that her husband called her foul names and shoved her might not find much real help, but people would at least pretend to care. Age prejudice allows us to dismiss mistreated children entirely.
We’ve made an inept attempt to address this problem with so-called mandatory reporting laws. In theory, some people (teachers, doctors, some others) must pass children’s reports of abuse on to CPS. These laws didn’t even exist when I was young, but I hear from the trenches that they haven’t helped much. Some simply ignore the law, since they “know” that all children are silly and bratty and deceitful. Even if the law isn’t ignored, CPS probably won’t help unless the child has been beaten bloody — and maybe not even then, since any lie the parents tell is likely to be believed. A more likely outcome is that the child will be viciously punished for telling.
I’m always a little disgusted when I hear, “Why didn’t they tell anyone they were being abused?” They almost certainly did. Since they were nothing but lowly children, nobody cared.
This leaves children in bad families in an impossible position. Their guardians, who are supposed to take care of them and protect them, neglect and target them instead. If they seek help elsewhere, they’ll quickly and consistently find that the whole world automatically sides with the abusers and may even aid them. They are likely to be targeted for other abuse (e.g., school bullying) as well, since they have no protection. This, too, will not be taken seriously by anyone, since they’re only children.
The clear message is that they are inherently worthless, they deserve to be treated badly, and no one will ever care about them. By the time they’ve aged enough to be taken seriously, it’s often too late to undo the worst damage.
Children can’t fight two dragons. When a child sees a dragon, his young-mammal instincts tell him not to draw a sword but to seek help. When he does, instead of a knight, he finds another dragon. Society not only doesn’t help with his family’s abuse, it re-attacks by laughing at him and insulting his integrity. Meanwhile, his uncaring family won’t help with any outside problems he has, and will re-attack him if they learn of any. He’s entirely on his own, all the time, in all situations.
The child doesn’t know there are two dragons. From his point of view, it’s all one giant dragon of everyone hating him and treating him badly. He concludes that nobody will help him because he doesn’t deserve it. What else could he conclude?
As he ages, he’ll try some steps to improve his own life. Both his family and society will fight him at every turn. His job applications won’t even be considered. Most employers will discard the application quietly, but if he applies in person, he’s likely to be openly laughed at. He’ll be told to focus on school — a dismissive remark masquerading as sage advice from an elder. School doesn’t help his situation at all, but age prejudice means that nobody will care or even wonder about what’s driving him to seek work. He’s still on his own.
An extremely clever and able young person may be able to generate an income, perhaps by posing as an older person online. He still can’t move away, because nobody will rent to him. Age prejudice tells landlords that he’s “too young” to be responsible, despite the facts that he’s already running a business and that plenty of 40-year-olds have trashed apartment after apartment.
Some people even tell the young that it’s illegal to rent to them. It isn’t — shelter falls under “necessities of life” and is therefore a valid point of contract at any age — but there’s not much point in explaining this to people who will only laugh and tell him to focus on his studies.
Some young people try to sic one dragon on the other by contacting CPS, hoping to escape to foster care. This seldom goes well. CPS is unlikely to help unless she has obvious physical injuries, and maybe not even then. Some young people have resorted to faking such injuries, but tricking a dragon is a dangerous game. If she’s caught, her real motivation will be ignored. At a minimum, she’ll be smeared as that awful person who told lies to send her loving parents to jail because she was mad that they wouldn’t let her go to a party. And that’s just the minimum. The maximum is appalling.
Desperate young people, unable to move out, may run away instead. They will be treated as bad people victimizing their assumed-wonderful families with their irresponsible rebelliousness. Age prejudice means that nobody will wonder why they were driven to such an act. If anyone even pretends to ask, it will be only to supply a dismissive answer like “He was mad that they punished him.”
It’s astonishing and maddening to consider how much more seriously I am taken now that I have gray hair and lines around my eyes. The same reports which once elicited smirks and titters now garner responses like “That is pure evil right there” and “That bitch has got to go on a permanent basis.” These are literally the same reports of the same events. The only difference is that I have aged enough to be believed.
All of this being the case, we can’t really address child abuse without addressing age prejudice. We must relax or eliminate the laws preventing young people from beginning independent lives, so that the more capable ones can simply walk out the door. For the others — and those are the majority, especially when the effects of the abuse are considered — the most important change is for us to collectively stop assuming that everyone born less than thirty years ago is a pathological liar.
The other important change is to stop thinking that a little bit of abuse towards children is okay. Imagine someone claiming that a husband isn’t a batterer because he only intimidates and slaps and shoves his wife, never anything really abusive. Absurd, isn’t it? But we’ll happily accept that a parent who hits his children with a board is merely “paddling” them, and even tell ourselves that it’s good for them, or that at worst Dad is a little old-fashioned. Similarly, overt mockery and ridicule are downgraded to “teasing” when done to children, pathologically controlling behavior is dismissed as “concern,” etc. Because the targets are only lowly children, we don’t have to care. We care about child abuse in a vague, abstract way that we can apply to stories in the news, but never apply that to anyone in our own lives. It never occurs to us to apply the same standards of decent treatment to children that we apply to literally everyone else.
Even when the abuse is extreme, our age prejudice tells us that the children are exaggerating if not outright lying, and the parents were probably right to be annoyed by whatever those liars are leaving out that makes it all their fault. They’re only children, so it doesn’t really matter anyway. We downplay abuse to mistreatment, and then dismiss mistreatment as fine. Both should stop.
If such a person tells the truth at 35, jaws will drop. If he tells the truth at 16, he’ll be assumed a liar or even gaslighted with claims that his parents love him and he’d see that if only he weren’t too stupid to understand how great they are.
A young person in a bad family is caught between two dragons, and neither will help against the other. They often team up. When you’re trapped in a cave with a dragon, and another dragon guards the cave mouth to keep you there, what do you do?
You get burned. Horribly burned.