TOXIC PARENTS.

TOXIC PARENTS. There are a variety of ways that parent can be cruel to a child. Not all abuse is physical. For example, I posted here on how Louisa May Alcott’s mother told her when she was ten or eleven that she would have to support the family because of her father’s irresponsibility. I posted here about how, years ago, one of the guests at a Manhattan dinner party we attended remarked that there were six of us and that three of us had good mothers and three had toxic mothers. We tend to underestimate just how many toxic mothers there are. It’s an uncomfortable thought, and society tries to overlook the bad parents. The Brothers Grimm turned the wicked mothers in the first editions of Snow White and of Hansel and Gretel into wicked stepmothers (see this wikipedia article). This article by Emily Yoffe in Slate gives estimates by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of just how many toxic parents there are. Some 3.3 million cases of abuse or neglect were reported to child protective agencies in 2010. It is acknowledged that a number of cases are never reported. The CDC cites estimates that 20% of children are victims of some kind of child abuse.