Child labour

Started by Writingthepain, July 05, 2019, 09:40:40 AM

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Writingthepain

My npd mom started me cleaning the house aged 4, by age 10 I was solely responsible for the housework. By age 14 I was also the sole cook, cleaner, laundress and gardener in the house.
By age 17 I'd become her de facto pa organizing her life, making her phone calls, writing her emails and communicating with all the people she didn't want to.
Age 22 I was stunned one day to hear a friend of mine tell her mom off for not doing her laundry!
Effectively I became my moms slave so that she could live the easy life.
Is child slave labour something that pd parents do?

Call Me Cordelia

Wow, that's extreme! But yes, I heard many times from uNF with regard to household tasks, "That's why we have children." Said from his recliner.  :roll: In high school my boyfriend's parents referred to me as "Cinderella," because so always had a list of chores to be done before I could go on a date.

An ACON friend of mine woke up on her tenth birthday to her NM gleefully informing her she was now responsible for the family laundry.

appaloosa

Yes, that was my experience as well. Even if no actual chores needed to be done, my NF would make up things for me to do. I was never allowed to be 'lazing around'. I had to polish his shoes, fold his laundry and iron his shirts. (my enmeshed mother saying nothing) When I was smaller, I had to sit in the driveway pulling weeds all day while my friends played. When the weeds were gone, I had to pick up every single twig in our 3 acre wooded back yard. Sweep out the garages, dust the house, paint the house, vacuum the cars, keep the huge lawn cut. And when I was older (starting at about 10) I had to work in his office after school and every Saturday and holiday. One day he decided to make me move a dump truck load of topsoil from one side of our (big) yard to the other side. With a wheelbarrow and shovel. In the rain. Then, haha, he made me move it all back to the original spot. Sick. It was like in addition to enjoying free labor, he enjoyed seeing me not get to do what every other kid my age did. Could not wait to turn 18 and get out of there. We won't even get into the physical abuse. Have been NC for over 5 years now, but I wish I'd done it when I was 18 instead of in my 50s.

Dukkha

Yep.  Happened to me too.
I guess PDs see people as resources, pawns to control.  They feel bigger when making people do their bidding. 

I remember thinking about how farm kids in my experience had to toil and stuff, but at the end of the day there was love, appreciation, and sharing to balance things.  With my PDs, all there was was forced labor, and at the end of the day there was abuse and neglect.  Toxic.

StayWithMe

QuoteThey feel bigger when making people do their bidding. 

Not only that.  They feel bigger when either they make you do something that you don't want to do or at least do it in the most inconvenient way. 

Watch how when you negotiate ie Call me 48 hours in advance; make list, etc........     No a Narc won't do that.  They'll call you at the last minute; can't be bothered making a list but become angry when you forget. 


Andeza

Once upon a time, my uBPM would go outside and spend three hours mowing the lawn in the summer. It was close to two acres, so it did take some time to do. She did this, religiously, every Thursday. Also, religiously, every Thursday she would clean the house top to bottom. Dusting, scrubbing the bathrooms, beating the rugs, mopping the floors, vacuuming the whole house - including the couch cushions, collecting and disposing of the trash, etc. Whether it needed it or not, honestly. In retrospect, the house probably needed that sort of cleaning once every two to three weeks, ish. The problem? She would leave me all the inside work to do. And it was never good enough. There was no discussion preceding this about increasing my responsibilities or whatnot. There was only a crash course of what to do and that she expected it to all be done by the time she had finished mowing.

She tried adding mowing to the list, but was foiled. I'm too short to reach the pedals, so she tried to make me scoot forward. Not only was I still too short, but I didn't weigh enough to trigger the pressure switch under the seat that acts as a fail-safe to turn the mower off if your butt gets airborne somehow. So no mowing for me :evil2:

Now this was not called child labor, it was called chores. I'm still not clear if that entire list was appropriate for an early teenager or not. Certainly the nitpicking afterward was not fair nor at all encouraging. Definitely not the way to have a kid be willing to do chores and I recall thinking "if you want it done a certain way, do it your own darn self." I still hate cleaning really.
Remember, that there are no real deadlines for life, just society's pressures.      - Anonymous
Lasting happiness is not something we find, but rather something we make for ourselves.

11JB68

Didn't experience this as a child, but more and more I realize that I've become a servant in my own home...cook, maid, janitor, washer woman, errand runner, lawn and yard care....trash, etc....

TriedTooHard

Yes, some PD parents do this.  My grandparents did this to my uNPD mother.  When she became a mother, she vowed not to do that to her children. 

She was still disordered in assigning chores and teaching us life skills.  She infantilized us, but left the most awful stuff to us.  For example, as "tweens", I started having to clean bathrooms, and my brother had to start maintaining the car.  But, she was very irate at the thought of any of her children learning how to cook, vacuum, or do laundry.  Those tools were off limits to us, even when we were in our late teens.  It was really weird - having a 10 year old do your oil changes but not allowing him to fold his clothes or prepare a snack!

StayWithMe

Quote from: TriedTooHard on July 08, 2019, 04:35:49 AM
Yes, some PD parents do this.  My grandparents did this to my uNPD mother.  When she became a mother, she vowed not to do that to her children. 

She was still disordered in assigning chores and teaching us life skills.  She infantilized us, but left the most awful stuff to us.  For example, as "tweens", I started having to clean bathrooms, and my brother had to start maintaining the car.  But, she was very irate at the thought of any of her children learning how to cook, vacuum, or do laundry.  Those tools were off limits to us, even when we were in our late teens.  It was really weird - having a 10 year old do your oil changes but not allowing him to fold his clothes or prepare a snack!

My mother was like that as well.  If I cook anything in her kitchen these days, she will have it follow me around that I left her kitchen a mess.  Mind you, a single glass on the counter is a mess to her.  Since all of her children have tkeys to her house (6 of us) she never contemplated that someone might have come along after I finished cleaning up. 

Likewise with vacuuming.  She liked having the knap.  I agree but as soon as someone steps on the carpet, then the nap is down.  She would give us girls orders to vacuum on Saturday morning and then come back at 2pm accusing us of having done nothing.  What are we supposed to do?  Corrdon off the rooms that we vacuumed until she gets back.  I have gotten to the point where i believe that my mother is not that stupid.  I guess that would make her evil.

My mother also liked offering out my housekeeping services.  I remember once visiting my mother's relatives one thanksgiving and guess who washed all the dishes afterwards.  I remember telling a couple of friends who thought that that was crazy.  These days, I have a ready made response to such orders which is "IF I weren't here, what would you be doing?"  It's also a good line should you figure out that you were invited somewhere just to be the housekeeper.

I think I am a good guest.  I clean up after myself and I help out.  But I am not the main housekeeper where ever I go.  My mother has not sprung that on me in a while.

KD5FUL

My PD father and PD stepmother were both married 3 times.  They had children with each of their exes.  We were a ´family´ of 2 pd adults and 7 children.

I was the SG and it was my sole responsibility to wash all of the dishes.  for every meal.  PD step monster would inspect the dishes afterwards and if there was one spot of food on a fork, or a bit of grease on a pan, I would have to rewash everything.

On holidays, PD parents LOVED to host.  They would invite many people to dinner and cook elaborate meals.  Afterwards, I would have to wash everything.  Sometimes it took me hours.   If I didn't wash fast enough, I was punished.  Yet, if anything was dirty, I was punished.  It was just awful.

On many occasions, PD's friends would comment something like, ¨Maybe you really should buy a dishwasher¨.   Pd parents would always make the charming joke, ¨we have one, and her name is KD5FUL.¨

PD step monster was not educated and never worked.  She basically hooked up with my PD father to have someone pay for all of her bastard children. She also resented being a stay at home wife and forced all of the children to maintain the house so that she could watch T.V.  She loved Soap Operas.  Every weekday, she would watch, Days of Our Lives twice ( it aired twice a day).

Even though she never did any housework, she would complain constantly about her responsibilities.   :stars:

She also had very high standards for cleanliness and organization that borderline on OCD.  EVERYTHING had to be exactly so or she would become abusive and violent.

לפום צערא אגרא

A victim of abuse who suffers in silence will suffer the most.