In news coverage of child abuse cases you sometimes see the line “the mother had previously consulted the welfare office.” On the other side, there are parents who never consulted anyone until the abuse came to light.
Parents who can put out an SOS — “I’m afraid I might hurt my child” — and parents who cannot. Where does the line between them sit?
This article walks through the mechanism that divides “the parents who can consult” from “the parents who cannot,” using the lens of “distress” versus “maladaptation.”
Chapter 1: The Difference Between “Someone Who Struggles at Work” and “Someone Who Becomes Maladapted”
Before we get to abuse, let us think about a workplace. In one office, A and B are both struggling at work. Both are late often, both make mistakes, and their colleagues are running cover for them. But the colleagues see the two of them in completely different ways.
A has trouble getting up in the morning. When something is explained to her, it lands like fog — she can’t quite take it in. When she makes a mistake, she reports it to her manager, anxious, and tortures herself: “I’m putting a burden on my coworkers,” “I’m failing as a professional.”
B, on the other hand, plays games until late at night, can’t get up in the morning, and stops at a convenience store on the way to work even when he’s running late. He leaves his mistakes uncorrected; when called out, he pushes back: “no one explained it to me.” He has no awareness that his colleagues are covering for him. Everything is someone else’s fault.
Both will tell an acquaintance, “work isn’t going well.” But what is happening inside them is not the same.
Chapter 2: What Divides “Distress” From “Maladaptation” Is Inner Conflict
Inside A there are two pulls running at once: ① “I have to do my work properly” — a sense of obligation toward what an adult ought to be — and ② “this is too much; I don’t want to do this.” When the two collide, guilt rises in A, distress builds, and she takes the distress somewhere — a friend, a counselor, a doctor.
Inside B there is ② — “this is too hard, I don’t want to” — but ① is barely there. Mistakes go unreported and unfixed; he doesn’t notice that colleagues are covering for him. There is nothing for ② to collide with, so no inner conflict forms. And without inner conflict, no guilt forms either.
The colleagues, watching, pick this up immediately from posture and expression. “Sure, both of them need backup, but B’s attitude — what is that?” In fact the one in distress is not B. It is the people around him.
Chapter 3: Why the Mother Who Doesn’t Consult Has No Inner Conflict
The difference between a mother who puts out an SOS and one who doesn’t is not information, and not strength of will. It is whether inner conflict is present. And that conflict only forms when a particular psychological condition is in place.
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