Friday, June 29, 2007
Spanking
After talking to my husband today I decided to post yet another one of my "wonderful" motherly advice. Oddly enough in the black community spanking is pretty much a way of life. When I tell my in-laws that I DO NOT WANT MY SON TO BE SPANKED they look at me as though I have grown an extra head. I assume that they think it is because I believe that my son will be the best acting most well behaved little in the world...this is entirely not true. I know that he is a normal person and is therefore not perfect, and I also know that he is a little boy and will therefore get into little boy problems. You see, my aversion to spanking is that I know the history of spanking.
Most people don't know the meaning of spanking, or the history of it. Spanking, or whipping, beating, or whatever you want to call it, was used by the slave masters to keep the slaves in line or whatever. Often times, after working in the field and eating fattening food and what not, the slaves were much larger than the slave masters and over seers, so in order for the slave masters to keep them in line, they treated them the same way they treated the other animals they were in charge of, by hitting them. After a while, it became commonplace to hit the slaves, and it happened without a second thought. After the children watched their parents being hit, they began to lose respect for them, and the parents could not get the children to do anything without spanking them, so that is what happened. Over time, this tradition got passed down by great grandmothers to grandmothers to mothers to daughters to granddaughters to great grand daughters, and so forth. And just like the cycle of abuse between father, mother, and child, so it is between generations. It becomes strange to any educated adult, why a parent should feel the need to hit their child.
It has also been proven in studies that children are much smarter than we believe them to be and that they can understand much more than we give them credit for, and also that spanking a child teaches them to hit. I just believe that it is mu duty and right to not have to hit my child, and I should not be judged negatively because of it.
Labels: confessions, Mommy-hood, P
Posted by ME at 11:27 PM
c0mments!
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