Why Abusive Men DON'T Love Their Children
We need to think the unthinkable and use a better concept of love to judge fathers who are perpetrators of abuse
Welcome
Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz continues to grow, with nearly 7,000 subscribers, and my last mailout, “Parental Alienation and Family Courts: Highlighting the Voices of Abused Mothers” has been looked at more times than any other post I have done on this site.
So — thank you as always for your support. It means so much to me.
Continuing the “Abusive Men” series
This post continues Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz’s “Abusive Men” series that I have run periodically over the past few months.
By now there are a growing collection of posts I have written for the site on this theme that you might want to read.
These include:
Abusive Men Describe the Benefits of Abusing Women and Children
How Abusive Men Distort Obligations and Fairness in Relationships
These are some of my most popular posts so far, with 40,000+ reads and 260+ likes between them — so I felt it was time to add another post, this time to explain why abusive fathers DON’T love their children.
Of course there are abusive mothers too. However, because coercive control is largely male-perpetrated, this post focuses on abusive fathers.
Why do we have trouble recognizing that abusive fathers don’t love their children?
It is important to observe the resistance that societies seem to have in recognizing that abusive fathers don’t love their children, and ask why this is the case.
So, why is this the case?
There is a very deep-rooted reluctance in society to apply critical attention to fathers’ actions in relation to their children. Abusive fathers can often get away with their actions, because convincing the world that, as a father, they love their children, is very easy.
How easy is it?
So easy that, even when the father does something that should be viewed by everyone as totally horrific – such as murdering the child’s mother in the child’s presence – there is a tendency to skate over how the abusive father’s actions have harmed a child.
Coming Up: What’s in this post
The post starts by discussing a U.K. case of a father allegedly murdering a child’s mother, and the way the story was covered by the mainstream media. What does this say about how harmful actions by fathers towards their children are ignored and brushed aside?
The post then discusses the case of pedophile fathers, and the way that even these most despicable men are sometimes not properly excluded from their children’s lives. Why is society so reluctant to properly recognize their harmful actions and stop them from having the chance to abuse their children?
Then the post discusses how abusive fathers are able to trick us into thinking they love children. What does this tell about what society thinks love actually means? And what does love actually mean? …
The post plots a pathway to see through the supposed “love” of an abuser, and to instead use a better concept of love to judge fathers who are perpetrators of abuse.