I'm happy I live in a civilized country

[frualeydis]

I just wrote a long response to a person in a discussion in a friend's journal, and LJ ate it. This person was criticizing/ridiculing a couple who believed "that only verbal reprimands should be used on their children" and I wrote that quite a few people believe that hitting children is wrong. That even if it doesn't give lasting physical damage the fact that the one person the child trusts utterly willfully hurts it will cause emotional damage. Children can't rationalize why mum and dad, who they love and who they believed loved them, suddenly would want to hurt them. It is a breeding ground for low self esteem, insecurity and issues with trust. Also, children who are abused very easily pass this pattern on to their own kids.
I wonder how people can think it's wrong if a man beats his wife, but okay if a parent beats his child.

I'm happy I live in a civilized country where the beating of children is forbidden by law. It doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, but there is much less general acceptance of violence against children and statistics indicate that it is more rare since the law was made in the 70s.

ETA clothsprogs' comment made me realise one thing. I, the extremely scared of conflicts person, actually feel secure enough among my friends on LJ to write something that I know is controversial. Yay!

Comments

[clothsprogs.livejournal.com]

do they also think that it's okay to slap a woman who doesn't obey her husband?

So long as she has the right to slap him too.

They are adults and (rtightly or wrongly) are presumably expected to have achieved an ability to reason beyond that expected of children.

Not all children will push to the point of needing a physical shock to wake them up to the fact that their parents are in charge and that bad behaviour will not be tollerated (consequences to their actions and all that) - by the same token, not all the children who push the situation to the point that they get smacked will learn by it.

Yes, some parents will go beyond a mack and into physical abuse, just as some who do not smack their children will take verbal reprimands into the realms of verbal and emotional abuse. They are not the norm and I would no more accuse a parent who smached a persistently misbehaving child of physical-abuse than I would accuse a parent who scolded a misbehaving child of verbal-oremotional abuse simply based on the fact that some parents take it too far.

Teddy