What Makes Families So Important

When we are children our families take care of our basic survival needs;
they are also our first and most important sources of information about the world.
It is from them that we learn how to think and feel about ourselves and what to
expect from others. Our emotional foundations are created by the ways in which
our parents treated us, the ways in which they treated each other, the kinds of
messages their behavior communicated to us, and the ways in which we handled
that information internally.
SELF-IMAGE
Young children believe that their powerful, important parents have a
monopoly on truth and wisdom. Therefore, whatever a parent says must be right
and true. When a parent makes a judgment about a child’s basic worth, this opinion
becomes fact in the child’s impressionable mind. If parents let their children know
that they are good, valuable, and lovable, they will develop a view of themselves
that is positive and solid. They will expect good treatment from others because
they will believe they deserve it. But if a child’s early treatment teaches her that
she is bad, inadequate, worthless, and unlovable, she will find ways to set up her
life that support this view. The negative self-images that some children develop
carry through into adulthood. As I looked for a common denominator among the
women I worked with who were with misogynistic partners, I found that they all
carried with them from childhood a profoundly negative view of themselves. It was
this damaged self-image, more than any other factor that set these women up to
accept abusive treatment from their partners.