"I got my ass whupped by my parents when I was young and I turned out okay."
How many times have we heard this excuse for beating up children? It is an obvious attempt at rationalizing child abuse as something that is for the victim's own benefit.
But here's the catch: I know the people who say this are not "okay," far from it. How do I know this? Simple: They advocate the right of parents to violently assault their children.
Worse, they even glorify child beating with folksy old-fashioned assertions about it being necessary for keeping kids in line.
In the above video, we see a man viciously berating and whipping his own daughter for her purported failure to "submit" to his God-ordained authority as man of the house. Her offense? Downloading copyrighted works off of the internet, a victimless infraction that is not even considered prosecuteable by our oligarch-protecting criminal justice system. She's hardly the type of child you would see on one of Maury Povich's old shows. She is not the type you would parade before millions of gasping daytime TV viewers as an "example" of why we need child torture subcontractors (e.g. boot camps) to teach the little punks a lesson. Yet, read the commenters on any news site and you will see countless rationalizations of the act of savage brutality directed against her. Many of the defenses are, indeed, variations of the "I turned out okay" excuse. What is it that makes this defense so appealing?
My personal view: many Americans are gluttons for punishment. They view human suffering as a character building excercise. To them, pain is a means towards salvation and eventual prosperity. The infliction of pain and occassional injury upon their offspring is away of instilling the blind obediance to authority they require in their imaginary meritocracy. What better way to exhibit this sentiment then to portray the pain as a rite of passage that you yourself went through?
If only the child abuse apologists knew the grand irony in this statement. They were assaulted as children and now they think assaulting children is good parenting. They have internalized the authoritarian impulses of their upbringing and plan on continuing this honorable family tradition by smacking kids around for muttering statements under their breath.
Now, let us look at the result of this pathology:
Why is the problem of violence against children so much more acute in the US than anywhere else in the industrialised world, asks Michael Petit, President of Every Child Matters. Over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by family members. That is nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The child maltreatment death rate in the US is triple Canada's and 11 times that of Italy.BBC News)
Related:
Miami Herald: Florida spurns $50 million for child-abuse prevention
Pandagon: Fundies and child abuse
Pandagon: The culture of Christian child abuse
CBS News: 31 GOP Senators Oppose U.N. Children's Rights Convention