You Have No Way Of Knowing

Some childfree people say if they did want kids, they would be good parents while others say if they would make terrible parents and it's part of why they are childfree (not any explanation is really needed). Sometimes, they bring up examples of abusive parents. There is a bingo to this: "You wouldn't be that kind of parent."

My response to that: You do not know.

Nobody wants to imagine that they personally know someone who is an abuser of anything, let alone a child abuser. But the reality is there's no way to know. With the exception of the most extreme, abusive parents don't stick out like a sore thumb, especially not when the abuse is non-physical.

I have said before if, somehow, I had a child and did give it up for whatever reason, I would not be an abusive parent. But I don't know this. This would be my child, not someone else's child I can send home when they get irritating. I have to tend to this child's needs. I wrote a previous post about the toll the stress would take on me. What if the stress and exhaustion became so much, I abused my child? It's easy to say I won't, but I have never been under any severe stress I couldn't handle. In a situation, in circumstances I couldn't do much of anything about, what would I do?

Of course, this doesn't apply to all childfree people. Not by a long shot and I can safely say I would never abuse someone else's kids. But my own would be a different story. Nobody who knows me could guess I'd be capable of such a thing. There's only one way to find out if I am and I'm not doing it.