Children and corporal punishment

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I never heard my parents or grandparents talk about being subjected to corporal punishment by their parents. I did hear stories of corporal punishment meted out by nuns and priests, however.
 
redbetta said:
A tired, working-class parent
lower class people
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Ouch.
I kinda get a sense of what your aiming for, but it’s also an unfair stereotype. It could very well be that non-lower class people do it behind closed doors. They also tend to be less in the public eye, in general.

As a parent, I’ve been acquainted with parents who used corporal punishment and those who didn’t. Now that their children are older, graduating high school, entering college, I don’t see that the corporal punishment had much of a positive effect on the children’s behavior. They’re out drinking and whatever just the same.
 
I’m not saying that all members of a group do that annd all members of another group don’t do that. I am just saying it tends to happen more often in certain populations than others. I can try to look up stats if you want me to.
From what I have observed from my mom and our relatives and family friends of an old country peasant background is that they believe in corporal punishment. My dad was a lot gentler and tried to talk to me more despite being from the same country. However, two important differences is that he has received post-secondary education and his English is much better.
 
I was punished with spankings from my father. It’s hard to not resent it to this day, even though he has passed. Spanking did nothing positive and did a lot of negative.
 
Not only did I love my parents, I liked my parents and enjoyed spending time with them, but I never considered them friends per se.
 
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I disagree. I think they are on a continuum, a distinction without a difference. I simply do not believe hitting a child, whether it’s a paddle on the bottom, or a strap, is a good thing.
 
I have heard comments that corporal punishment is easier for poorer families because it doesn’t require free space or a lot of time from the supervising adult, or rely on there being a lot to take away.

It’s also been not so long historically that a beating was considered an appropriate penalty for adult criminals.

I know I got spanked a lot as a kid. I doubt honestly that substituting a different punishment would have made my life better. The problem was not the type of discipline and more the unthinking resort to punishment. And it’s no secret on here I think my childhood was badly mismanaged. But the moments I remember hurting are the words, not the spankings.
 
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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I think people exaggerate their youth, they walked to school “up hill, both ways” and in 5ft of snow in the winter 🙂

Also their use of ‘beaten’ doesn’t equate to broken bones or a multi day recuperation. Most such beatings ended in a sore bottom, not lacerations.

And parents thought they were training their child, they used corporal punishment out of love, not to inflict harm.
 
Parents aren’t punishers, they are friends. Authority figures? No, they are helpers and advice givers and those with wisdom. But authority? No, that is not how parents and child relationship should be. It is a mutual respect
 
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RuthAnne said:
I did not feel the love. To this day, it has only meant harm.
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I didn’t like getting spanked but the connection with my actions was clearly made, it was a consequence. Outside of getting spanked I think most children felt loved by their parents. I think parents are mostly the same, they just use different consequences now than in decades and millenia past.
 
It’s hard to say. The Wikipedia entry on John Carradine says ‘… William Carradine died from tuberculosis when his son John was two years old. Carradine’s mother then married “a Philadelphia paper manufacturer named Peck, who thought the way to bring up someone else’s boy was to beat him every day just on general principle.”’ I mean, you’re right, he survived it but it sounds like a difficult experience - and the rueful way he recounts it makes it sound like perhaps it wasn’t considered normal for the time. It seems to me that adults were more capricious towards the children they were responsible for, and the society gave adults more discretion in disciplining children, than they do today.
 
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RuthAnne said:
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Theo520:
And parents thought they were training their child, they used corporal punishment out of love, not to inflict harm.
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I did not feel the love. To this day, it has only meant harm.
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Did it involve anger and shouting? Or was it calm and measured?
 
GospelOfMatthew said:
Parents aren’t punishers, they are friends. Authority figures? No, they are helpers and advice givers and those with wisdom. But authority? No, that is not how parents and child relationship should be. It is a mutual respect
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‘Mutual respect’ won’t get your kid to stop playing video games and start doing his or her homework, however. Someone has to be in charge.
 
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Parents have Authority. Parents make Decisions for their children and MUST correct their children.

Once children are legally adults, this relationship changes.
 
Theo520 said:
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RuthAnne:
I did not feel the love. To this day, it has only meant harm.
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I didn’t like getting spanked but the connection with my actions was clearly made, it was a consequence. Outside of getting spanked I think most children felt loved by their parents. I think parents are mostly the same, they just use different consequences now than in decades and millenia past.
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I felt that same sense of not being loved, but for me it was never connected to being spanked in particular. Rather it was connected to the ongoing feeling that the rules never quite made sense and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing, but it was disrespectful to try to get clarification.
 
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