Have you ever heard the saying “family comes first”? Of course you did because it’s in every TV show and movie — you might even hear it in the streets. But here’s something that people don’t usually mention:
Family doesn’t always come first and, sometimes, it shouldn’t because some families tend to be horrible, enable physical and/or emotional abuse, and much, much more. If you’ve paid attention to recent news or if you’ve simply been online, you might realize that these abusive tendencies that some families have MUST be talked about now more than ever.
And why do we need to talk about them now? You’ll see once we share a few stories.
The first story we’ll share here is one you might have heard about already. Raneem Wael, a girl from Ismailia, wanted take off her hijab and told her mother, which prompted a series of mistreatment that resulted in Raneem’s own mother hitting her with a car.
Injured but alive, Raneem tried to report the incident to the police, who eventually arrested the mother but set her bail at 500 pounds. Yes, you read this right. And if that’s not enough, many parents commented that Raneem’s mother was perfectly within her rights when she hit her daughter with a car and sent her to the hospital. As of right now, it’s been reported that Raneem has been disowned by her mother.
Now, you might have a lot you want to say about that but wait till you hear the second story first. In this one, a 20 year-old girl was being threatened by her physically abusive mother for going to work. And it didn’t end there, when the girl got home one day, her mother assaulted her and continued her threats until the girl escaped with nothing but her phone.
If you find yourself speechless right now, we won’t blame you — but this is EXACTLY why we need to talk about abusive parents and families more than ever.
We all know that abusive parents didn’t just start existing when these stories broke out. As horrifying as these two girls’ stories are, we know that we’re just scratching the surface because this has always been going on.
As sad as it is, parental abuse is insidious and relies on parents controlling, abusing their kids, and and excusing themselves by way of cultural practices (i/e: “we do not allow this behavior here”, “what would people say”) and ‘strict’ parenting (i/e: “I’m the parent and my word is law”).
Another big problem that leads to victims/survivors of abuse not speaking is that glorification of parents as figures that can do no wrong, figures that are obeyed without a second thought, because that leads to people essentially not believing that a parent can be abusive or even dismissing abuse as something ‘disciplinary’.
So what do we need to do here? Raise awareness?
Well, not exactly. See, at this point, we all know abusive families exist and that there are hotlines that help end the abuse and relocate abused children. But what we need to do is to be active and call in when we suspect that abuse is going on.
However, if you’re surviving abuse or know someone who’s currently dealing with it and they just can’t live with anymore or don’t want to call a hotline, what you’ll need is a source of financial stability so you can stand on your own two feet and be able to cut ties with your abusive family — because, yes, when abuse cuts deep, you have to cut it out of your life even if it’s hard.
