The End of Captain Corporal Punishment
As my wife and I prepare for the arrival of our child, the premature-yet-recurring thoughts I have is if I will be a corporal disciplinarian. We talked about this well in advance; my wife is definitely not a proponent of our first child getting broke off with a beating.
Now, you have to step lightly around that word ‘beating.’ Perhaps the correct terminology is whooping, spelled just like that. A beating is what cops do. A whipping is what a horse gets. A disobedient child gets whooped.
I like my punishment like I like my football. No hands to the face, no giving the business to the youngster.
It’s rough because I grew up with corporal punishment. I always knew that I wasn’t being abused, and that my parents still had my back in spite of the thunder. So I can’t easily disassociate myself from a tried tactic of discipline.
But by trade, my wife is prohibited from allowing what could be construed by the public as abuse. Belts, switches, they are both out of the window. And for what? Because society says general can be disciplined by other means besides violence?
What do you think? Again, I’m not advocating for beating the brakes off your child, but I do think there is something to physical punishment without inflicting psychological damage. Sure, I can’t measure if whooping a child is psychologically damaging or not, but I can measure how many times I’ve been arrested or suspected of a crime. Zero.
And I owe it all to beatings.
