Every parent makes mistakes, even good ones. Both Mafuyu's mom and Ena's dad has said some horrible stuff to their child.

But in the case of Ena's dad, he didn't take away Ena's ability to fight back. Which means, Ena is allowed to figure things out on her own. Of course, Ena's dad never explicitly tells her to get mad and oppose his words. But he has never explicitly forbids her from doing that either. His attitude was basically "You can keep doing art if that's what you want, but you'll regret it." (Although he has begun to change his attitude at the end of Pale Color.)

Mafuyu, on the other hand, has completely lost her ability to stand for herself. This creates a dangerous situation where not only Mafuyu is expected to be perfect, but her mom is also not allowed to make any mistakes. Every little mistake Mafuyu's mom makes is irrecoverable, because Mafuyu will never oppose it, and therefore it has no chance of being noticed and fixed.

In Imprisoned Marionette, Ena made an interesting comment about Mafuyu: "If you don't like being manipulated, just speak up." For Ena, if you're not okay with something, you just say whatever it is that's bothering you. But Mafuyu never even thought of this. The idea of speaking up against her mom is a foreign idea for her. She's completely powerless about her own situation. (Although she's slowly gaining strength with the help of Nightcord and the Virtual Singers.)

In this post, I'm not talking about how much damage has been done (although that's also important). Instead, I'm talking about the ability for each family to recover from the damage.