In the development of the self everything matters, in realising this we must then decide on the approach to punishment and discipline. How will it play out in time?
When we choose to correct a behaviour that we see as undesirable or in error in a young person, we must choose wisely so as not to cause a harm that may last into adulthood and affect the person in negative ways they may never know the root of. It is for this reason that I am going to begin this speculation by initially positioning myself as against modern parental techniques that seem to have moved very far away from the physical, and heavily toward the psychological in nature. I will try to support a position and then, as always, invite you to refute it.
I believe it may be more preferable to punish the errant youngster using smacking than to use psychological mechanisms such as reasoning. The reasons why I take this stance are that the young person may be incapable of reasoning at the level we expect them to be at, and may take the psychological punishment as a form of humiliation, or plain meanness. I know that humans are animals, primates, and no matter how much we think we transcend the world of animals by having reason we are still affected by our animal traits. The two monkeys experiment into perceived inequality is a way of using more basic primates than us to illustrate where humans, who are also primates, make mistaken value comparisons. The experiment into making dogs respond to a bell indicates how animals, even humans, can be programmed to respond to repeated stimulus. Marketeers and advertising psychologists know how to press our buttons it’s true. So why might we think that an experiment into utilising potential shame as a correcting mechanism for behavioural change would not carry the lasting baggage of humiliation, and why would we think an underdeveloped psyche could be capable of reasoning beyond the basics of its nature? Children operate with a predominant will, they have not yet gained the experience to correct this, it must be up to parents to instil the affect of reasoning by a process that contains both failure, to get what they want, and disappointment, in not getting what they want. This will harden without making harsh as long as it is not taken too far.
I’m talking about attempting to convince an irrational human, one that may potentially be upset, and to win them round to recognising that their behaviour, or the result of their choices, is wrong. This is rather than instilling in them that there is no right or wrong in moral terms, but there are consequences to not going along with the defined rules of a more powerful actor. The problem being that to drill into the behaviour of the offender, and to discuss it in this rational way, is a labour not all are up to. I’m willing to bet that I could quickly and quite easily form a rational argument against any instruction that you can posit as a moral imperative, and I can do this not because I am good at arguing, nor because I am willing to be merely pedantic, but because I have studied moral theories in philosophy. A young person maybe cannot do this, but they can feel that they are undeserving of the lecture, and they may not learn from it even if they happen to give in to it just to make it stop.
Physical punishment has no need of rationale, it does not need to win over the mind of the subject of it. Merely teaching the subject of power that they are a subject of it, and there is nothing they can do about that, reinforces the fact. And it is a fact that life is not fair nor democratic, and that rules are built on rules that are built on rules that are built by powerful actors. I know that this is a not desirable situation, just as you do, but I also know that if every indiscretion was to be judged in isolation before being decided upon we would still be living in tribes and asking the chief to decide all things legal. Parents are, for the most part, repeating the learned tropes of their parents, they are not being ‘fair’ as such. I could not imagine my dad explaining every time the reasons why I needed to take school seriously and to be attentive, or to not attempt to injury one of my siblings because of fleeting anger. At the time I just didn’t want to go to school, I viewed teachers as repetition engines, full of perpetuated falsehoods, and lacking in inspiration. Learning has to be about more than two plus two and photosynthesis, and I still feel this way now. Yet, it was important that my dad won this argument simply because he knew more about life that I did.
People go to a psychologist many years after they have been a child to talk about why their relationships with family, friends and love interests break down, or why they don’t achieve their full potential in adulthood as they thought they once might? What is clear is that in many cases an incident or series of incidents in their childhood concerning expectation, humiliation, or shame still affects them. Of course there may be other things involved but I wish to know of one case of humiliation that resulted positively? I’m not excusing violence if metered and for purpose, nor am I saying violence is the first action, nor am I saying a sustained level of violence in parenting is not harmful. That would be a ridiculous thing to assert. I’m just saying that irregularly applied, and proportionally metered, infrequent physical pain fades quickly, and when it is associated with only an event that was undesirable in the opinion of the powerful actor, one that in its absence also correlates with the absence of experiencing the pain itself, it leaves no lasting scar on the body or the mind.
My father did not beat us, he did smack and sometimes kick out at one of us, and we deserved it. I harbour no resentment, I was an angry unruly child that could be often found up to mischief, I needed a smack and I got one. We have a fine relationship now, we chat regularly and respect each other even if we do not regularly agree. I have not become a thug, I was not a violent parent nor did I need to be (I raised a stepson), but I didn’t explain myself to my youngster I just stated the way I wished things to be and that’s the way they were. I had it easy though, I dealt with a sedate teenager that didn’t rebel much, often I wished there was a bit more fire in him actually.
This has likely been a controversial post, but remember as always I am not an expert in what I write about and my posts are just speculations, feel free to disagree.
pinkfloydpsw's Blog 
Leave a comment