Solid point, I think one of the biggest things the government could do to encourage people to have kids is implement universal basic income because that would mean everyone had financial independence no matter how many hours they worked (or didn't work).

Even if I wanted kids, I really don't think I could cope with being completely financially dependent on my partner for years. And years is a best case scenario, some women's careers never recover after they leave work to have kids. 

Provide free childcare

And not just free childcare but childcare where you can drop your child off before your workday starts and pick them up after it ends. Your career still takes a hit if you can only take jobs that don't mind you leaving for an hour or so in the afternoon to go to the daycare/school/other childcare place, get your kids, bring them home, and get them settled. 

The only reason I think any sort of "explanation" (not that a good enough explanation for abuse will ever exist) for abuse is ever useful is to help us victims understand that the abuse was only ever about our abuser's selfishness and nothing we did or didn't do had anything to do with it.

My primary abuser is mentally ill too, not that she would ever admit it, and I will never accept it as an excuse. The illness didn't make her choose evil, she did that on her own. 

Ugh, therapists who don't understand that shared DNA is a bad reason to keep a terrible person in your life need to go find something they're actually good at and do that instead.

If I ever go back to therapy I'm going to have a bunch of interview questions for the therapist, I'm no contact with a parent too and am totally unwilling to give my money to anyone who is too stupid to realize that sometimes going no contact with a parent is the best thing for your mental health. I'm also unwilling to give money to anyone too stupid to realize that forgiveness is never necessary to heal and in fact has nothing to do with healing, or too stupid to understand that CBT is generally (maybe not absolutely always but generally) unhelpful to the point of causing more harm to traumatized people. 

Like goddamn, did she think every first session would be tea and a light chat about weather, work and weekend?

Ha! Yeah it can't seriously be that shocking that people who go to therapy do it because something is really bothering them and they need to talk about it. 

this! trauma dumping is a real thing and dipshits like that therapist are making a really useful name for an action meaningless by misusing it.

any therapist who thinks trauma dumping is possible in a therapy session should at best be sent back to school, but they should probably just have their license taken away if they're that confused about the difference between things that are appropriate in a therapy session and things that are appropriate with strangers/coworkers/acquaintances. 

Exactly what I came here to say! Nothing makes me feel as understood as linkin park when I'm having a shitty day. 

The most frivolous is probably the shitton of delivery food I've ordered over the years. If I had kids I would have had to suck it up and cook way more often no matter how tired I was and how badly I wanted to sit down and rest.

It's so small in the grand scheme of things but goddamn it's nice to decide I don't want to cook and not have to worry about whether I can afford that little convenience and all the stuff kids need. 

Listening is the single most underrated communication skill, we hardly ever talk about it but absolutely no communication ever happens without someone listening. 

When an adult misbehaves so egregiously, forgiveness must be earned through actions.

This! Handing out "forgiveness" to some asshole who has never even said they're sorry, let alone done anything to earn it, cheapens the entire concept of forgiveness and is deeply insulting to everyone who actually did the work. 

Outside of a very few literal sociopaths (as in people professionally diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, not someone who was a jerk one time and got internet diagnosed), nobody goes low or no contact with a parent, especially not their only living parent, on a whim. If you would ever even think "I want to pull away from my parent as soon as I financially can" you have a very good reason for it.

Some people will think less of you for protecting yourself but some people believe all sorts of stupid shit. People believing that you're a bad daughter for protecting yourself doesn't make it true any more than people believing the earth is flat makes it true. 

Mine would act like she hadn't seen anything at all and start talking about something she saw on tv. Beats being screamed at but it's still crazy-making. 

My core fear is definitely being trapped, I'm already avoidantly attached so I know I could survive abandonment. But I don't really see a lot of difference between those two scenarios, a big part of what made my childhood so awful was the fact that none of the adults around me loved me enough to protect me. 

or just so stupid/lazy he can't figure out how to reach out to her in the age of social media. Neither is an acceptable trait in a romantic partner.

Ahahaha I love how you put that! It's so true, anyone that stupid/lazy is just not partner material. 

Same! She's saying nice things about how badly she messed up but I would just never be able to trust someone who would ever so much as seriously consider inviting my estranged female parent to my home. It's not even just the profound betrayal, it's also the total lack of respect for her husband's right to decide who he wants in his life. Nobody cuts off contact with a parent for fun, and bluntly only complete fucking morons think anybody does that shit on a whim. 

if only I would stop exercising free will, and let them run my life.

My first serious boyfriend was just like that. He thought I could be so great if I would just drop my bizarre attachment to making my own decisions and having my own preferences and let him dictate every aspect of my life. It sucks how many people like that are out there. 

One thing that helps me is thinking about what would actually change if I got the apology. I haven't had any contact with my female parent in over 10 years so this is all strictly theoretical but if my female parent got in contact to take full responsibility for all of the terrible things she did, showed real remorse and understanding of why what she did was so harmful, and tried to make it right to the extent that's even possible (some things can never truly be made right but that doesn't mean you can't try, for example if you abuse someone you should pay for their therapy), that would fix none of the problems in my life. I would still be hypervigilant, I would still be pathologically independent, I would still be largely unable to trust anyone, I would still believe that love has to be earned and nothing I do is ever quite enough, etc, etc.

You absolutely deserve apologies and for your parents to make amends, and expecting them is only hurting yourself. Your parents have shown you what kind of people they are and it's not the kind of people who admit it and apologize when they do something shitty. Wishing they were the kind of people who would listen to you, take your words to heart, care about your feelings and regret the harm they did is completely reasonable, I'm pretty sure we all want that, but trying to make your parents be completely different people is like burning yourself on the stove over and over because you really really want it to be cool and soothing this time. 

That's very common both here and in r/EstrangedAdultKids. I call mine my female parent because titles like mom or mother imply affection and respect that she doesn't deserve and more derogatory terms like egg donor don't feel right because my sister and I would've been better off if she had just donated an egg and fucked off, the problem is that she stuck around. 

All my life my father has told me that I mistook their love for sexual offences.

What the entire fuck. If a child I spent time around "mistook" my love for sexual advances or just seemed uncomfortable with anything I did with them, I would immediately stop doing those things! They knew you didn't like being touched that way and deliberately did it anyway, that's fucked up. 

And yes, it's 100% sexual harassment. 

I'm not even claustrophobic and that got an instant NOPE NOPE NOPE reaction from me. Nobody who actually cares about their kids would try to jam them in that small of a space if they had any other choice. 

Also if you need a manual to tell you to treat your child like they have feelings, the problem isn't a lack of manuals. 

He says that he does this stuff because "normal couples want to spend time together," but it feels like a control thing to me.

what the entire fuck. no, normal couples want their partner to get enough sleep, especially if that partner is currently sick! I've never had strep but I've heard it's awful, I. would never wake up someone who had it without a really good reason, like "you asked me to wake you up at x time so you could y" or "it's time for your meds." 

that is 100% some controlling bullshit. any reasonable person would let a sick person sleep, waking you up when you don't need to be up and got way less sleep than he did makes it look like he just can't stand for you to not be available to entertain him every minute he's awake. that's appropriate for a 5 year old, not a partner. 

I cut off contact with my female parent over 10 years ago and don't regret it at all. If I could go back and change anything I would have done a no-contact trial run sooner, that's what proved to me that there was no point trying to get through to her.

If it's any help, going no contact doesn't have to be a single permanent decision. You can try it out and see how you feel about it, you're allowed to change your mind and get back in contact even if you've had no contact for years. 

I don't really recommend that, the kind of person who forces you to go no contact (nobody does this for fun, we do it because all of the other options are even worse) in the first place generally doesn't have an epiphany, go to therapy, and become a person you would actually want in your life, but it's your life and you're allowed to do whatever you want with it. 

Same, I think it's so common for kids with ADHD to also have CPTSD that it would be kind of weird to run into someone with ADHD who doesn't also have trauma. If a kid spends their whole childhood being told who they are is bad and being punished for things they can't control, of fucking course that's traumatic. 

That's exactly why I keep talking about how that super popular 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method doesn't help me. For ages I thought grounding methods just didn't work for me at all and I didn't understand what they were supposed to do, but it turns out other methods work great for me.