Experiences of Parenting

Society will portray an image that parenthood is a choice, but for survivors it is not so clear cut.

For some survivors, parenthood occurs much earlier than would have been sought normally. This might have been as a direct consequence of the early life abuse experience itself, bringing the associated complications and reminders in later life, or as part of troubled teenage years.

The choice to be a parent is something that is also an issue for many survivors. This can be for a number of reasons, including deciding not to be a parent or being unable to be a parent, whatever the issue, it is distressing for the individual.

If you are a parent and were abused as a child within a family environment whether the abuser was a parent or not, it can be difficult for many survivors to know what ‘being a good enough’ parent is all about.

Our experience, within CIS’ters, has been that members of CIS’ters who are parents tend to over compensate for the failings they experienced as children, rather than under-parent.

Keeping a child safe from harm is usually the topic raised and so we are providing the following links to sites that might be of use:

Family Lives - a large number of aspects of parenting

Think u know - information on how to keep children safe online