Daddy Monster

This is an alarming and disturbing campaign made by AWARE, Association of Women for Action in Research from Singapore to help women understand and consider the impact of domestic violence on children.

Ad prints are revealing creatures on some case scenarios that look much familiar with what most of us humans do. In fact, we may easily think that those creatures can be our parents. If we go back in time…in our childhood we can find some resemblance. At that time we thought that they are monsters imagining creeps from the movies. Those were just our parents. That was our perspective as children.

Your mother acts as though nothing happened. She makes dinner and sits at the table, staring into her plate. He stumbles in drunk, stands behind her and says, “I’m sorry. Do you forgive me?” She sits silent for a long time. You can see the bruise over her eye turning purple. You can feel the sadness filling the room. She sobs without looking up. He forces a kiss on her then smiles at you as if to say everything’s fine now. You stare into your plate.”



You pray he has a good day at work. Or else you will have to hear your mother getting punched again tonight. And you pray she doesn’t talk too long to the neighbors or bring dinner out too cold. Or do anything else to annoy him tonight. Because you really don’t want to hear the screams. They make you wet the bed at night. So you pray. You pray that today, by some miracle, he won’t come back at all.”

“This morning it’s all quiet again. Your mother’s nowhere to be seen. But there’s a broken bedside-lamp in the trash. Did he hit her with it? Has she left? Has she left you behind? What will happen to you if she really leaves? You don’t know. You’re only ten. All you know is it’s too quiet now. Quiet is scary. Sometimes it’s scarier than chaos and slamming doors, yelling and pushing and being spat at.”