"You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a... very brutal disciplinarian"
About this Quote
Notice the careful calibration of voice. “You think...” recruits the audience into complicity, not to shame them, but to expose a default lens we rarely examine. Then she tightens to “in my family,” grounding the claim in lived reality. Even the hesitation - “I would say, was a... very brutal disciplinarian” - reads like someone negotiating the language that polite culture offers for violence. “Disciplinarian” is the euphemism families use to launder cruelty into something like virtue; “very brutal” yanks it back toward truth. That pause before the word lands suggests both the weight of naming and the residue of loyalty, fear, or disbelief that survivors often carry.
Context matters: Johnston, as a cartoonist, built a career turning domestic life into legible narratives. That background makes the quote feel like an inversion of the comic-strip household: the mother not as moral center, but as source of terror. The intent isn’t just confession; it’s corrective. She’s widening the cultural frame of what abuse can look like, and who is allowed to be believed when it doesn’t match the expected villain.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mother |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Johnston, Lynn. (n.d.). You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a... very brutal disciplinarian. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-think-about-child-abuse-and-you-think-of-a-54620/
Chicago Style
Johnston, Lynn. "You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a... very brutal disciplinarian." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-think-about-child-abuse-and-you-think-of-a-54620/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a... very brutal disciplinarian." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-think-about-child-abuse-and-you-think-of-a-54620/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
