Unexpected Cruelty: when Women beat their Children

When I write about violence against children in homes, as I have been doing for the past two weeks, I know that many people imagine the father beating his children, the classical picture of raising your children with violence. I have however seen that women are at least equally cruel – if not even more. At least here in India.

When you think of a woman and her children, you think of a nurturing mother with compassion, kindness and love in her heart. If you had once witnessed what I have seen happening here, in daily life in the homes of my friends or just outside on the road, you would wonder just like me: how can this human being whom we perceive as so soft, be so violent with her own children? How can she be so brutal and cruel to those whom she carried in her belly for nine months and whom she gave birth to with her own body?

A few weeks ago I read that a woman in central India was arrested: her four-year-old son had been teasing her and she beat him that much that he died of the consequences. In my childhood, I have seen women beating their own children black and blue. Yes, they really had bruises all over the body!

Believe me, I have seen women acting in a crueler way than men and I believe I can offer an explanation why this is like this in India.

I have explained you many times that women are not equal to men in this country. They are, by society, culture, tradition and education lower than their husbands, brothers and even sons. The suppression of the female gender is obvious in many big and small things of daily life – one of them being the fact that they get beaten.

In childhood, it is normal to be beaten at home, boys and girls. Men are the target of this domestic violence usually only as children – women however are beaten first by their parents and once they are married by their husbands. Even in adulthood, they cannot escape daily violence.

Men thus feel they have the right to hit and take out their anger on those who are weaker than they are: women and children. It is no wonder that women, the so-called ‘weaker gender’ then get frustrated about all the violence they are being subjected to – and in turn pass it on to their children.

Once they lose control and hit, I think it is not anymore only about the milk that their son just spilled. It is not only the daughter’s naughtiness that speaks through their blows. It is their anger, their frustration, their fury at the injustice of the world they are living in.

That’s how they are so brutal. That’s how they are so cruel you sometimes ask yourself if you can still call her a mother. It is not motherly love. It is female desperation. And it has to change!