2006-10-23

Do not Abuse Your Children

In the West, the tendency has been moving away from parents beating their children. While this is a positive step in a civilised society which has lost touch with the harsh realities of survival in the wilderness, many parents have substituted verbal and mental chastisement and abuse for physical punishment. While no marks are left and the effect is more subtle than a corporal attack, mental scars do result such as impaired verbal, speech, and brain development.

The culture and legal system currently dictate that one may not physically abuse their children, but unusual deference is otherwise given to the parents in raising their child. Most natural families are not nuclear, but are more tribal, with extended family having at least as much to do with raising the children as the biological parents. Therefore in natural families, children tend to be more protected from the excesses of their parents than modern families whose dominance has resulted from advances in transportation and housing technology and the economic drive to migrate to maximise buying power.

I therefore reject this modern notion of "Don't tell me how to raise my kids!" Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes, most often without realising them. Qualified reproduction may be a human right, but abusing your progeny is not.

Bottom Line: Neither physically nor verbally abuse your children.

(I do not nor would I suggest a legal mechanism to enforce restraint in verbally abusing one's children. I aim simply to educate.)

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