Children and corporal punishment

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tomarin

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It seems whenever I read about the childhood of someone born before say 1950, it involved being regularly beaten by a parent. Just in the past few days, I’ve read about Tennessee Williams, Willem de Kooning, and John Carradine, all of whom were regularly beaten by their parents, sometimes quite harshly from the sound of it.

I know that the aphorism ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ used to be taken quite seriously, but what was going on here? Did these parents not love their children? I can see corporal punishment once in a while back in the day but for it to be a regular occurrence sounds like straight up child abuse.

Anyone care to comment or offer some perspective? Is it possible people didn’t love children as much back then, because there were more of them and people were poorer?
 
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tomarin said:
Anyone care to comment or offer some perspective? Is it possible people didn’t love children as much back then, because there were more of them and people were poorer?
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People can get socialized to a lot of really horrible stuff. If you grow up thinking there’s nothing wrong with hitting a kid with a belt…🤷‍♂️
 
@LawyersGunsAndMoney But I guess what I’m wondering is, was this the prevailing view at the time, that this was okay (or rather that there was no limit to the ‘spare the rod’ principle?)? I wish my grandparents were still alive so I could ask them.
 
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I’m willing to accept this but it also seems that a significant portion of the population got a little carried away at times. I feel like there must have been some weird psychosocial dynamic going on in some of these families.
 
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Now that I reflect on it, in my own family, not only did my parents not hit or beat me or my sisters, but I don’t think their parents (my grandparents) disciplined their children physically, or if they did my parents never mentioned it to me. I have a hard time imagining it, but I suppose it’s possible on occasion.
 
LawyersGunsAndMoney said:
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tomarin:
Anyone care to comment or offer some perspective? Is it possible people didn’t love children as much back then, because there were more of them and people were poorer?
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People can get socialized to a lot of really horrible stuff. If you grow up thinking there’s nothing wrong with hitting a kid with a belt…🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...
As a child, a spent a brief period with a step-mother who certainly took “spare the rod, spoil the child” to heart. All it taught me was fear. There was no attempt to reason, it was a peculiar form of tyranny, “Do as I say, no matter how capricious, and maybe, just maybe, I might not hit you.”

We did not hit our children. We did not spank them. There were consequences for bad behavior, but never violence. Hitting children is as wrong as hitting adults.
 
niceatheist said:
As a child, a spent a brief period with a step-mother who certainly took “spare the rod, spoil the child” to heart. All it taught me was fear. There was no attempt to reason, it was a peculiar form of tyranny, “Do as I say, no matter how capricious, and maybe, just maybe, I might not hit you.”

We did not hit our children. We did not spank them. There were consequences for bad behavior, but never violence. Hitting children is as wrong as hitting adults.
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I’m glad for you that it was a brief period; although I’m sure not brief enough.

Yes, you’ve hit what I’m getting at on the head precisely by calling it ‘a peculiar form of tyranny.’ I believe children need discipline and structure to thrive, but there’s something not right about an adult terrorizing a child with violence.
 
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My kids have never been hit or spanked and God help anyone who ever tries to change that.
 
Amen. The disrespect that is normal today was simply unthinkable.
 
just because a lot of pe9ple did something in the past, doesn’t make it right.

people who explode at their children and go all out, aren’t disciplining at all, they’re looking for an outlet for their anger.

I’ve experienced it as well, but there was no attempt to explain what I had done wrong, often, I hadn’t even done anything objectively wrong, I just did something that my parents didn’t personally like.
 
I think part of the reason why corporal punishment has been phased out is because people are now more educated and have better quality of lives. A tired, working-class parent who is not very eloquent with words may find it easier to just beat the kid than to take the time to make sure the kid understands why what they did is wrong. They may not like that they beat their kids, but they are fed up or don’t have the time or the skills to do it any other way. You see it today that lower class people tend to take more of these ham-fisted approaches to parenting than upper class people. I know my mom was incredibly ham-fisted as a parent. I used to think she was a narcissist because of her abusive behavior, but now I see that it is just the way she was raised and also the fact that there is a cultural and language barrier between us that impedes the communication of more complex ideas.
 
redbetta said:
A tired, working-class parent who is not very eloquent with words may find it easier to just beat the kid than to take the time to make sure the kid understands why what they did is wrong.
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Wow.

Now to insult the intelligence of those who use corporal punishment. Just wow.

Once again, a spanking used as one choice in a “parenting tool box” and beating/abusing a child are not the same thing.
 
Go back a few hundred years and hitting with your hands was barbaric but formally disciplining with a belt was not. Of course, a lot of people got carried away and were just abusive. This was more for older children and teens than toddlers or really young ones.

I don’t think it meant they loved their kids less. They were just socialized differently and had different norms and expectations.
 
but they are easily passed off as the same thing. kids who are actually beaten are told that they are being disciplined and that it’s their fault and they desesrve it.
 
I’m not necessarily saying they are unintelligent. All I am saying is that they might not be as eloquent. My mom certainly has a lot of street smarts and practical knowledge, but she is not eloquent (in English, at least).
 
Wesrock said:
Go back a few hundred years and hitting with your hands was barbaric but formally disciplining with a belt was not. Of course, a lot of people got carried away and were just abusive. This was more for older children and teens than toddlers or really young ones.

I don’t think it meant they loved their kids less. They were just socialized differently and had different norms and expectations.
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I think it must complicate their relationship, though, as I think it’s natural to resent being beaten by a caregiver, even if you acknowledge you were misbehaving in some way. In other words, the parent might love his child as much, but it might not be reciprocal.
 
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