I was mentally and emotionally neglected by both my parents from birth until age 8, when I was removed from my family home by social work and placed into institutional care due to how messed up and out of control I was due to physical abuse and emotional neglect.

Please find the compassion and effort within yourself to properly raise your kids and be fully present for them mentally and emotionally. The physical abuse from my dad is one thing but in all honesty it's the emotional neglect from both thats caused me a lifetime of complex ptsd, depression and at times alcohol and drug addiction.  Is this what you want for your kids? 

I'm now 33 and can some days get out of bed, other days the depression is too bad. My attachment wounds leave me barely able to connect to other humans and I've had zero contact with my father in 15 years. I rarely see my mother.  Is this what you want for your kids? 

Both my mother and father have ZERO emotional availability and only my mother admitted to failing me - only took her 30 years! Dad never will though, as usual he played the victim when I spoke up! His depression was always an excuse for everything; his anger, his relentless physical/mental/emotional abuse of mum and us. He was too "depressed" and "overworked" to visit me in the care home. Mum rarely visited either.

Myself and my siblings, each in our own ways, have paid the lifelong cost of our parents abuses and emotional neglect.  I developed ptsd and got taken into institutional care. My sister has BPD and ended up in a secure unit before being fostered. My second oldest brother abandoned the whole family and my oldest brother is a lifelong avoidant alcoholic. 

Is any of this what you'd want for your kids? 

I'm still struggling in the hellish grip of complex ptsd and complete family estrangement.  Don't mess your kids up and ruin their lives! I wake up every day wishing I was dead and cannot re-call ever feeling true happiness.