介绍:
Emotional Child Abuse May Be As Bad As Physical Harm
Brian: “Our notions of childhood mistreatment need to be broader and need be more holistic than they have been. There are no hierarchies when it comes to child mistreatment.” Certainly, it is a problem there, because usually when you talk about child abuse, the first thing you think of is, you know, beating or kicking a child in some way. Clearly it is not limited to just that.
Lincoln: That’s true, and in a lot of countries around the world, as well, when it comes to punishment, morals and attitudes are changing a bit, whereas in the middle of the century it wasn’t a big deal, or if it was, it wasn’t as big of a deal as it is now. It seems like that’s something that’s changing in the modern society, and not just in one country, but globally. Globally, parents and teachers are thinking of different ways to discipline children, maybe because we are actually having to see the effects now – that this leads to depression and anxiety and a lot of other mental health problems.
WY: If we are simply talking about discipline, in the old days, we can see more Chinese families had four generations living under the same roof, and usually they would have, like, six kids in the house. The parents are really exhausted during the whole day’s work, and finally, if they want to discipline their kid, there would be simply a slap on the face, or directly kick the child – but slightly – on the butt. So, in that case, they were calling that as a simple punishment.
Brian: Well, it is, but actually, that’s a very interesting point you made there, given what you mentioned that you had families which were quite big, had quite a few children, that, you know, after a hard day of work it’s hard to take care of that, necessarily, having to deal with all that, so maybe the number of children, and having to do hard, physical labor might be related to, you know, seeing no better option than hitting your kids. In the U.S., in many places, like in China, a hundred years ago, you did see a lot more agricultural workers, a lot of physical labor and whatnot, and you saw larger families, so maybe these are somehow related there. But as Lincoln mentioned, as things have changed, say, in the 1950s, in the U.S., I would say probably most households, most parents would hit their kids in some way as a form of punishment. Now it’s a little bit different – yuppie types of parents in the U.S., especially parents who are young, who are well-educated, or, you know, middle or upper-class, that sort of thing, they tend to not hit their kids at all. It’s quite uncommon, and seen as a bad thing to do, and might actually be child abuse in the views of a lot of people.
WY: We’re seeing some report shows in the U.S., they will ask the kid to go to the room to think about what they have done, or directly ask the kid that you might be grounded, right?
Brian: Right, right. So, what you see then if you’re not doing physical punishment in the U.S., a lot of parents will do like you just said – they’ll put kids in “time-out”. In the UK, it’s called being put on the naughty step, or whatever. Basically, it’s – OK, you’ve done something wrong – you need to go to your room, or whatever, and sit there, ideally – well, theoretically, you’re not supposed to do anything; you’re supposed to sit there, you know, think about what you’ve done, all the bad, the harm that you’ve caused, sort of thing.
Lincoln: And I think that, again, goes hand-in-hand with the conversation that we had about more agricultural families or poorer families having less. So, for your privileges to be taken away, you need to have privileges to begin with.
Brian: Right, very true.
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