Does abuse get passed down from generation to generation in families?
Abuse is passed down through generations; the child of an abusive father often becomes an abusive father himself. The pattern extends through the family: an abusive husband abuses his wife, who turns on the children, who then need someone to abuse, establishing a generational cycle.
Les teaches that present-day statements from psychologists and psychiatrists show that certain qualities within a family carry on down generation to generation, and he identifies abuse as one of them. He explains that a child who has lived under an abusive father, by far the greatest percentage of the time, becomes an abusive father himself. He compares this to the agricultural "pecking order" observed in chickens and livestock: when animals are put together, they immediately establish a hierarchy, and the one at the bottom will never try to compete with the one at the top. Les says the human makeup does exactly the same. If there is an abusive father and husband, he abuses his wife, who invariably turns on the children. Those children, having been under that kind of abuse from their mother, have got to have somebody to go on, so the cycle continues.