Can Sexual Assault Survivors Create Healthy Families?
“Like everybody, I suppose, people we loved broke our hearts because they had access to them, and we broke our own hearts later by following their footsteps and reenacting their mistakes.”
— Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir
Most individuals who were sexually exploited as children yearn for a happy family, wherein adults respect and love one another and children are nurtured and protected. The dynamics of their family of origin, however—abuse of power, secrets, possibly threats of violence or actual physical abuse—often usher them into relationships with mates who feel “familiar.” In social gatherings, people who have unresolved issues tend to gravitate to each other as if by magnetic force.
While studying psychology and social work in college at age 19, I met a charismatic 24-year-old who had been loved conditionally, as I had. We both enjoyed sports, music, and movies, but had scars that left us needy and undiscerning. I wanted immediate exclusivity and he wanted to ‘play the field.’ Because I had been manipulated and discarded several times growing up, I feared abandonment more than anything. Despite his having several other lovers, I clung to him. Feeling like ‘damaged goods,’ maybe I doubted that I deserved honesty and loyalty. Rather than end the relationship after three bumpy years, I gave him a marriage ultimatum before he went to graduate school.
We were fairly compatible and supported one other through master’s degrees and buying our first house before having a child. Although determined to provide a positive family life, many survivors are frightened when managing behavior problems or stress the way their parents did or hear hurtful comments (from their past) coming out of their own mouths.
Some parents who were abused have problems setting appropriate adult/child or emotional boundaries because theirs were violated as children. Children’s interests and needs differ from those of adults. In The Courage to Heal, Ellen Bass and Laura Davis warn against using children as confidants or looking to them for sympathy or advice. “Your emotional intimacy with them should be to meet their needs, not yours.”
A 2008 study conducted by professors at Kent State University found that, beyond the issue of generational boundaries, sexual assault survivors sometimes struggle with providing adequate supervision for their children and with the use of harsh or inconsistent discipline. The 88 subjects, 48 women and 40 men, landed in one of the following six categories in raising their families:
Being stuck in the family legacy: experiencing poor health, family instability, domestic violence, addiction, prostitution, or prison
Being plagued by the family legacy: functioning well ‘on the outside,’ but continually bothered by their own abuse, emotional pain, depression, anxiety, and lack of trust
Rejecting the family legacy: creating a new way to be a family; most of these persons had encountered someone who challenged the old legacy, resulting in determination to love, to forge a healthy family; many of these persons had received professional help
Passing on the family legacy: living much as they had in their original families, hiding dysfunction, lying, substance abuse, their children being abused and sometimes abusing younger siblings and other children
Taking a stab at passing on a new legacy: sincere but ineffective attempts to parent differently than they had been parented
Passing on a new legacy: vowed to stop the cycle of abuse and adversity, ensuring that their children feel loved and protected, providing a nurturing, stable home environment, and protecting their families from violence
All families weave back and forth between health and dysfunctionality. Don’t be discouraged by the ‘picture perfect family’ that appears to be contented at all times and in every setting. They have problems, too, but may hide them. Below are suggestions for addressing your challenges to create a nurturing family life.
Watch how parents in healthy families handle stress and adversity. Listen carefully to their language, take mental notes, then try to emulate them.
Attend a parents’ support group and fully commit to practicing the recommended strategies. Ask questions during meetings and chat with other participants who express good ideas during breaks.
Make a list of relationship and parenting skills that are working well for you; count your strengths and continue to build on them.
Discuss differences you and your partner have that complicate your relationship or cause conflict in child-rearing. Listen to understand rather than to defend your position. Check out Northwestern professor, Michelle Buck’s work on ‘Conflict Transformation.’
Address your fear of confrontation, of standing up for yourself and for those you love. This may require counseling and role-playing but will promote healing and will empower you in all relationships.
Be alert to a tendency to overprotect family members. Your vulnerability as a child may lead to an exaggerated desire to keep your children safe, yet they need age-appropriate freedom and mobility. Discuss this with other parents or teachers to decide on reasonable levels of independence.
Provide your children with intermittent lessons about personal safety, being assertive with peers and adults, respect, and consent. You may wish to check out my earlier blog, ”Why Parents are the Cornerstone of Child Assault Prevention,” for tips and a bibliography appropriate for children ages two through teens.
Understand that recovery from child sexual assault is a process, not an event. You will likely have months or even years of smooth and joyful family interactions, only to be dragged back to an unhealthy pattern by a challenge in your marriage or a child’s need to test the limits. Apply the tools you’ve acquired through reading, support groups, counseling, or your spiritual family. Find new resources to manage new problems.
While my husband and I created a more loving, encouraging environment for our children than we had experienced, his need for the admiration of other women and to hide some of our kids’ behaviors from me caused insurmountable problems. Inadequate boundaries resulted in my entanglement with a member of our church, and despite a year of pastoral counseling, we divorced after 26 years. I wonder if our family could have achieved a greater level of health and remained intact if we had engaged in some of the above strategies earlier in our marriage.
“There is so much beauty in the trying, and in the failing, and in the trying again.”
—Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give
