When Will Hitting Kids No Longer Be Tolerated?
Most Americans Finally Believe that Hitting a Dog is Wrong
The following article deals with a topic that often causes anger and division when discussed. That is not my intention, however. The practice of what we call spanking is a culturally accepted method of disciplining a child in America. However, as societies evolve, inevitably people begin to question what once was considered “normal”. This article is an attempt to examine the rights of children which have been denied for centuries.
I’ve spent a huge portion of my life trying to protect children.
I was the oldest of six siblings. I used to say that mama had the last three and I raised them. Growing up in a religious cult, I experienced and witnessed a lot of child abuse. From emotional to sexual to physical to plain old neglect, I saw it all.
For some reason, I was wired to feel the pain of others.
Thus, I not only suffered my own neglect and abuse, but I also was deeply disturbed by the abuse that I witnessed. Years later, I discovered that not everyone can feel the pain of others. Because I registered high on the empathy spectrum, I was always trying to protect my siblings from falling into the hands of an angry father. Often, I was forced to bury my head in pillows to block out the sounds of abuse in the next room.
The all-American style of childrearing never felt right to me.
If you think we’re the shining example of grade A parenting for the world, look at the countries who have banned corporal punishment of children. There’s a long list, and America is not on it.
We’re being left behind in the Dark Ages.
As a child, whenever some adult tried to tell me about a parent’s obligation to discipline the body in order to save the soul of the child, my inner guidance system refused to sanction that point of view. Instead, red lights and sirens were set off without fail when I saw parents using corporal punishment to control a child.
I grew up, left home, and became a teacher.
For 22 years parents entrusted me with the care of their children. Not once in all of those years did I ever feel that a child in my classroom deserved or would benefit from a paddling, a smack up side the head, rulers across outstretched hands, or demoralizing words. Not once!
I did, more than once, recognize a child in distress.
Not because they disclosed family secrets to me. Oh, no. Children rarely tell on their parents even when their lives are endangered. But I had a sixth sense about these things. It was my duty by law to report it to the principal who then was required to report it to child protective services in the state.
I eventually became a principal of an elementary school.
Once again, I continued to protect children often at my own peril. When an angry parent storms through the door after their child didn’t get off the bus because a state social worker was sanctioned to remove the child from the home for their protection, things can get dicey.
Why do so many parents abuse their own offspring?
Because if you’re thinking that it’s a rare occurrence, you’re wrong. Below is an account of one of the first cases of child mistreatment brought to public attention in America. This was back in the day when spare the rod spoil the child was the major philosophy of childrearing.
Much could be done to children in those dark and ignorant times without any comment or interference from a third party.
I learned many, many years ago that the romantic notion of having a baby was mostly predicated upon old wives’ tales and fairy tales.
Wow! The minute I wrote the previous sentence, the thought crossed my mind that many of our old fairy tales are actual stories of child abuse. I just experienced a revelation as I sorted through this messy article. That happens to me a lot when I’m writing.
Think about this with me for a minute, please, if you will.
Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, were all tales of abuse and neglect. The abuse of children is so normalized, so deeply embedded in our collective consciousness, that we have stories that go way back about extreme cases of abuse. Stories that we tell our children early in life. They’re raised hearing these terrifyingly cruel stories.
Then they go to church with their parents and hear about how they were born into sin, fallen creatures who are deeply flawed, and hell bound.
The preacher encourages the parents to discipline their kids. Most parents assume he means whipping their offspring, an act that is now considered inappropriate in any other situation. However, beating children has been practiced in western culture for centuries. Our ancestors deemed brutality directed toward children as not only necessary but required to save their souls.
Christianity has a cruel streak.
Read Charles Dickens. Delve into a little western history. Take a gander through medieval times. Examine the records of Catholic orphanages or schools for the indigenous run by colonizers. Not sure where to begin? Try Ireland, Canada, the US. Take your pick. In western culture, children were a necessary bane of life. You needed them to help on the farm and scrounge for food, but at the same time, they were to be seen but not heard. They had no voice, no rights.
To this day, western culture cheers when a child is whipped.
We don’t allow husbands to whip their wives any longer, or wives to hit their husbands, or bosses to whip their employees, or dog owners to beat their dogs. At one time all of the above was permissible. Now, we’re horrified. If life can improve for husbands, employees (slaves), wives, and dogs, why not children?
We know that violence in all other cases is socially unacceptable and against the law.
We only hit our kids. That’s somehow ok. Parents are told to hit the tiniest among us. The child who has no voice, no money, and no power is the only member of the tribe that we’re not just given permission to hit, we’re encouraged to hit.
Beat that ass.
We make references to beating their asses as glibly as we might refer to dumping our trash. I’ve even seen YouTube videos of ass whippings. Parents are proud to show this heinous form of childrearing and other’s cheer their archaic efforts at parenting.
Can you even imagine if a husband shot a video where he beat his wife to teach her a lesson?
Or someone shot a video of whipping their dog with a belt because they’d peed on the floor? This is how you break a dog, folks. We use a wooden paddle whenever he pees on the floor. Trust us when we say, he’ll stop peeing on the floor after several ass whoopings. Make it sting.
I’ve always said that western culture doesn’t like children.
There’s no reverence for the imagination of a young child, the mind of an adolescent, or the development of a child’s brain. We don’t like children, so we treat them like little adults. We raise them with the cruel skills that our parents passed down to us. With no understanding of how the wiring in the human brain develops from birth to age twenty-five, we ruin their potential. Our culture tells us that children are brats that need taming not human beings that need love and guidance.
Yet, as we terrorize, neglect, and abuse our children, their brains are being wired to see the world differently than they might have if they’d been raised in a different culture, one of reverence for new life.
Once again, don’t try to soothe yourself by saying that child abuse is rare. It’s not. It’s very, very, very common. Deep down inside you know it. Maybe you, too, suffered at the hands of broken parents. Or maybe you knew someone when you were a kid who had abusive parents. You might not have been able to explain why you always felt weird when you were around your friend’s parents, but you did. Or maybe as a young teen, you told your friends about your own parents, the fighting, screaming, alcohol, general abuse, and neglect that you were going through.
Maybe you couldn’t wait until you could get out of the house. I know I couldn’t.
If I had a dime for every adult friend of mine who experienced a difficult childhood because they had parents ill equipped to be parents, I’d be able to fund a retreat for damaged kids. Let’s face it, those who beat their kids are often guilty of bad behaviors themselves. They scream repentance to a four-year-old but argue and fight with their spouses and set poor examples. Our divorce rates are proof enough of that. Being a good role model is harder than you think.
It’s hard being a parent, grownups always tell me.
True enough. Most of us barely qualify. There’s so much poor parenting across the world that if your parents are merely guilty of neglect, you’re considered a lucky child. Back in the day our ancestors didn’t know how to limit the children that they gave birth to, so they had a dozen or more, buried half of them before they were five, and produced more until mom finally died in childbirth herself. It sounds awful, doesn’t it? That’s because it was. That’s why I keep hoping we can do better.
Which brings me to my final point today.
Western culture has cherished a harsh approach to new life. We’ve had so few role models for centuries that we just repeat this inadequate even harmful approach to childrearing. We still have 19 states that allow spanking in schools. Yet, there are dozens of countries that have made it illegal for schools to use corporal punishment. Some countries have extended that to homes as well.
They’re using the science behind human development to inform their approach to raising and educating healthier kids.
Birth control is easily accessible and sex education is abundant in countries that are doing better than the US. Healthcare is affordable. Raising a kid is a bit easier with these support systems in place. Parents are more educated and understand that it’s ok to choose not to have children as well.
Sadly, like so many social ills that need to be outlawed in America, we continue to make it legal to harm our own kids, however.
The only human that is precious is the unborn, that clump of cells in the womb. After they’re born, anything goes. We’re behind the times. Americans live in a technologically advanced world where they still honor and prefer medieval social practices.
Here’s a link to a thorough study about the effects of trauma on the development of the human brain.
You’ll find statistics as well as a serious attempt to identify trauma and abuse in the above article. To put a name to these experiences that thousands, and thousands, and thousands of children down through the ages have endured even survived is long overdue. No wonder so many of us as adults lead confused, depressed, and anxious lives. Many of us don’t stand a chance.
Can we do better?
I don’t know. I think there are countries that have managed to make progress. We need to look at what they’re doing. I doubt that we will, but maybe future generations will be more openminded to change. Maybe they’ll have open hearts that will allow a trickle of information here and a few new thoughts there to slowly infiltrate their minds until BING they suddenly realize that there’s a better way.
I always have more faith in the young to fix things than I do with old folks.
We’re never more idealistic than when we’re young. That’s when we’re ready to change the world to match our dreams.
So, maybe our children will save us.
Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
