After lengthy conversations with my mother, I've come to find out that my father was very abusive towards me. Not overtly bruises and such, but he was very rough with his spanking, and yelled quite often. Hell he even made a hard wooden paddle with my name on it, and notches for everytime I had been spanked(I do remember when he broke it while using it on me one time, I guess the notched took their toll).<BR>Now typically the current belief is that abuse breeds abuse, and that the chances that I would abuse my children in the same way are alot higher than those that had not suffered through that. <BR>Now here is where the reversal comes in.. My wife as far as I can tell, was not abused, but she was adopted by her adopted mother from a family friend(who was a heavy drug user). I'm sure that leads to some issues, but the adoption was at birth, and I'm pretty sure her adopted parents did not abuse her. <BR>But the problem is that she treats our oldest son pretty much the same way my father treated me. I'm not even really sure I'm posting this, I just thought it was a bit strange, or at least a bit out of the norm.<BR>First thing I'm going to do once we get moved and settled is seek councelling. I never want to treat my children like my father treated me, and even though in someways I have treated them like he did, basically ignoring them(for him it was work, he always worked, he was a workaholic perfectionist). I no longer have my wife/their mother here to take care of the children, so I need to make sure I pay as much attention to them as I can. Maybe in the future I will remarry, for now it seems highly doubtful, but I do know one thing. If I do remarry, I won't be looking for a mother for my children, they are my responsibilty, and to force that on someone(even with their consent) would not only be wrong, but probibly would be emotionally stressful to my children.
