I’m still amazed that so many parents spanked their children as a controlled act of punishment, unlike my father who was just lashing out in anger. He wasn’t trying to modify our behavior or teach us anything; it was just anger. And aside from hitting his kids, he was a very “non-physical” person. I don’t remember ever seeing him touch another human being in any way.
I remember once when I was in my 30s, I had a kitten that damaged something of mine, and I picked him up and was beginning to shake him in anger. Then something clicked in my brain and I put the kitten down without hurting him. Turns out, in spite of himself, my father really had taught me something.
I live in Chicago and not in one of the richer parts of town, and I see a lot of hitting by parents. Most of the children are raised by the cuff of their parents fists. When I first moved in it was a bit shocking but it’s an everyday thing where I live. It seems to be socio-economic, as the Yuppies still left in my neighborhood never hit their kids, but the poor whites, blacks, Hispanics, all pop their kids in the mouth or whatever.
I recall when I was a kid my mother hit my brother out of anger on the arm. It was funny as my mother was rail thin and my brother was like 16 and he was 6’4" and 225 pounds full of young teen muscle.
Anyway I went into the kitchen and there was my mum soaking her hand in a bucket of ice. She looks at me and says “Well I guess I can’t do than ever again.”
It was so funny the look on her face. She had a swollen hand from hitting him and he didn’t even have a mark.
I’m not sure why spanking gets a special pass here. I was spanked as a child, always in anger. There was no rule that If You Do X, You Will Get A Spanking - whatever was the last straw that got Mom angry was the spanking offense, and what brought a spanking one day might barely attract notice another time. Is this somehow different than being slapped across the face because it involved a wooden paddle on the butt?
I wouldn’t really qualify it as anger, though, rather as self-defense instinct.
My youngest brother (3 at the time) was toying with his food while I served the soup. Dad said “stop playing with your food, it’s not a toy” The kid tried to overturn the table on top of Dad, Dad gave him a backhand across the face. There was a moment of stunned silence, then Dad said “don’t ever do something like that again,” the kid made a surly face and looked down, and we continued eating.
It’s the only time any of us got hit on the face; I got a spanking once (when I was 14), I’m not even sure if the bros ever got a spanking. The threat of “a spanking with Mom’s wooden Dr Scholl flipflops” was enough to make us behave like scared little angels!
There was another time when I, being 10 at the time, hit another child (4) across the face (stronger than I had meant to, I was glad to see he wasn’t hurt) because he was calling me a whore and similar names for kicking him and Lilbro out of my room; when I told him not to use that language, he escalated it and made a whole-body gesture which translated as “whatchagonnado, uh? You gronwups never do anything, you’re all talk!” It wasn’t a spanking, but it was a matter of discipline more than anger. I was more angry at his grownups for being pussies than at the kid for being an ass. Years later, his mother asked me to help them convince him to study the major the parents wanted because “you’re the one person he’s always listened to!” Yeah, I’m also the only one who consistently enforced rules, d’uh. I convinced the parents to let the son study what he wanted.
I don’t remember my parents smacking me. They must have once or twice, because I believed that they would, if I were bad, but I don’t recall it happening.
Did you reach this conclusion based on this thread, or from other information. Because I’m not sure the responses here are sufficient to support that conclusion.
Limited sample, sure, but so far 30% say they were never hit as a child or hit their children, with 70% saying it happened at least once or twice.
I was spanked as a kid, as were all of my peers, so far I I knew at the time. Of course that constitutes hitting your child in anger and I have no idea why the OP thinks there’s a distinction.
My mother hit me all the time out of anger, usually with a banshee yell and leaving behind a trail of broken furniture. It was mostly slapping and shoving me into walls. Sometimes she would climb on top of my stomach, hold my hands down and slap me in the face repeatedly. She justified her behavior mentally by assuring herself that since she wasn’t using a clenched fist, it was okay.
She only actually left a physical mark once – and that was when she scratched my face hard enough to bleed. I was by no means beaten until I was black and blue, but I was most definitely physically abused.
I also have to wonder where being constantly threatened falls on the abuse spectrum. If an adult waves a glass bottle over the head of a 14-year-old girl and tells her she’s going to break it over her head and send her to the hospital with a concussion, what is that? If an adult tells an 11 year old child she is going to grab the shotgun in the next room and shoot the child dead, what is that? Even though none of those things involved actual physical harm, the consequences were different from those of emotional abuse and even the slappy shit. In both cases I thought I was going to die.
If you don’t think there’s a difference between hitting your child for discipline and striking your child in anger, you’re wrong. Kids know the difference and internalize it. More than internalize it, a lot of them model that behavior – thinking ‘‘oh, this is how you handle anger – by breaking things and hurting people.’’ I went through it too–fortunately I had a non-crazy relative to explain that it’s wrong to lose your temper that way. But I absolutely did start acting out in the exact same way my Mom did, coming to school, flipping over desks, slamming down my books and generally being a total spaz until I came to understand that wasn’t normal or acceptable behavior.
No idea, huh? I can pretty easily imagine the following situations:
In one, the parent says “Don’t do x, or you will be spanked.” When the kid does x, the parent calmly says, “I told you if you did that you would get spanked, so now you are going to get that punishment, and hopefully learn that your actions have consequences.” And a couple of swats on the butt follow.
In another, the parent sees the kid doing x, grabs the kid, flipps him over the knee, and starts whaling away while screaming, “Don’t you ever do that again” while whacking the kid - hard - across the butt.
While I’d consider both of those spanking - I would consider them quite different actions. I was trying to suss out this distinction with apparnelty limited success.
I was spanked, and I did spank. M kids are too old now for it, but I did give my 11 year old son a smack on the head last week. He deserved it and I have no regrets.
I’m the parent. I’m the authority figure. I’m the boss.
This describes my experience as well. if we’re going to go with the OP’s separation of spanking and hitting. I have trouble separating them myself, because my mom lacked the control to use physical punishment as a discipline tool rather than a way for her to vent her anger and frustration.
While we can certainly describe situations in which spanking clearly isn’t “done in anger,” and situations in which it clearly is, I suspect that most real incidents aren’t so clear for either the parent or child involved. My impression is that a substantial fraction of (most?) American parents today see spanking as undesirable or problematic at some level–but they still do it sometimes, and how angry they are must often be a factor in resolving the decision.
An opinion grounded not only in child behavioral psychology, but also in personal experience of having been psychologically damaged by such treatment. I’m not sure why you’d dismiss it so readily.
Because IMO&E corporal punishment exists across a continuum, in countlessly differing situations.
Some of it certainly constitutes abuse by just about anyone’s interpretation. But for you to offer a blanket statement that “It [presumably every instance in which a parent strikes a child or vice versa] is abuse” IMO fails to acknowledge the countless factors including but not limited to: the different personalities that can be involved; different cultures and family dynamics; differenent definitions of countless terms used in this discussion including “abuse,” and “spank.”
As is the case with most absolute statements, I find your problematic.
I didn’t mean to offer a blanket statement, I just did some sloppy reading of this thread. I came back in here to examine the thread more thoroughly and found this:
In essence, I agree with this. I think many parents have found themselves lashing out in anger at their child at least once or twice. That doesn’t necessarily make them abusive (though I suppose it all depends on the context.) I do however hold the opinion that it’s wrong and should not happen. I’d like to think, though, that any parent who does this ‘‘once or twice’’ knows damn well what they did was wrong, else it would have become a pattern.
It’s hard for me to be objective about these sorts of conversations, to be honest. When you’re raised at one extreme it’s hard to know what is normal discipline and what is traumatizing. I have no intention of ever hitting my kid, even spanking, not because I believe spanking is traumatizing, but because, as I suggested upthread, I have within me a latent propensity to totally lose my shit. Because I don’t completely understand where that line is, I’m going to stay as far away from it as humanly possible.
I remember every time I was hit in anger. Some of those times were spankings. Other times they were face slaps, ear tugs, hair jerks, and a few kicks. Mostly by my grandfather (who repented completely before he died) but my mom slapped a few times.
I don’t think it did one bit of good when they hit me, spankings or slappings. I was scared to death of my grandfather but it didn’t keep me out of trouble. It just made me a better liar; sneakier.
When my oldest daughter was a little girl I hurt her too a few times before I realized this was a VERY bad thing. I mostly just slapped her and had a hard time stopping. I had to learn not to hit her, and it’s not an easy thing. It’s worth noting she remembers those times and still feels a wave of panic despite the fact that she was just around four years old at the time. It’s not surprising to me though, because the terror still comes right out when I think of the time my grandfather knocked me around for slamming the car door too hard. Knocking me around was “spanking” to him.
I will never hit my child again, and it’s not easy even now, especially with my precocious five year old. She makes me so angry sometimes but I can’t let her feel like I did, and still do. That’s not teaching her life lessons. That’s letting out aggression, whether we call it spanking or abuse. Not that spanking is always abuse, but it’s just too easy for one thing to lead to another for some people. There are better ways.
I am the parent, the authority figure. I can’t use that as a reason to hit a child and I can’t justify it as a form of discipline. I do believe from experience that spanking is hitting. What else could it be? I managed to raise my daughter without ever hitting her after those (regretful) early years and she’s turning out to be a great adult. I hope the same methods of discipline and redirection will have a similar result with her little sister.
Here’s another take on it. Just about every parent is imperfect, and at least occasionally fucks up in one way or another - acting or speaking emotionally on the sur of the moment in a manner they may or may not subsequently regret. I believe that an occasional physical strike might - emphasis on might - fit into this category, and does not necessarily constitute abuse.
Heck, let’s face it. A parent can easily speak to their kid in a manner that will likely be more “abusive”/harmful than any isolated crack across the mouth. Or can “abuse” them through neglect or any number of other ways.
I consider the term “abuse” to be extremely problematic, imprecise, and open to countless definitions. If nothing else, it depends very much on the personalities involved. One kid might get cracked and feel, “Heck, I deserved that. Better not do that again.” Whereas different kids might have any number of different responses.
My mom hit me one time but it wasn’t out of anger. I think it was out of fear.
I was ranting about something (I’m 100% convinced it was a hormonal change making me go nuts) and punched a hole in the wall then marched off to my room. My mom followed me into my room and slapped me across the face - literally like a sitcom version of trying to calm someone down.
By then I already had about 5" and 100# on my mom (yeah, and I’m a girl) so I think she just didn’t know what the hell to do to snap me out of whatever was going on with me at the moment. It was very out of character for her and I don’t blame her for it.
I agree with this. I probably can count on my hand the number of times I’ve swatted my kids on the butt; seems like it was necessary a few times when they were toddlers, to get their attention (for example, don’t run out into the street).
What I’ve observed in other families over the years is mostly people being rough with their kids - jerking and shoving. Probably there was a lot more I didn’t see.
