[LiveJournal "Writer's Block" question of the day: "How do you feel about corporeal [sic] punishment?" View all answers]

"Something to cry about"? Seriously? Thanks for triggering all my worst childhood memories, LiveJournal. But I bet you didn't think that people seeing that phrase on their LiveJournal home page might have endured actual abuse and that their abusers may have used that phrase, right? It just never crossed your mind? LOL what a creative title for today's Writer's Block all in good fun amirite??

Is there anyone here who doesn't know my views on this? I believe a child should never have to associate its parents with pain. I believe corporal punishment creates mistrust of the parent by the child, and emotional wounds that persist long after physical hurts have healed. I believe life as a child is hard enough when your parents are a safe space for you to go when you feel hurt, let alone when they are no longer safe, when your own house isn't safe, when your own room isn't safe, when you have nowhere to go to escape being hurt. I believe bodily autonomy is hard enough to teach to children without blatantly and repeatedly violating theirs.

I know some people believe that measured, detached corporal punishment is good for children and "sets them straight" or "keeps them in line." I don't. I believe there's a thin and sometimes nonexistent line between doing something "for the child's own good" and wanting to indulge your anger by hitting the child. I believe that presenting any form of corporal punishment as acceptable only enables abusers, who now have an excuse for doing what they do. I believe that you can't teach a child about consent if you think it's okay to hurt them physically for whatever reason.

I believe that "stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about" is one of the most cruel, demeaning, invalidating things you can say to a child. I believe that if you say this, even if you don't hit your child, you are creating an environment in which your child feels that it's not okay to express emotion, not okay to be sad, not okay to feel what they feel, without fear of getting hurt. I believe that such things create emotional distance that can last for the entirety of the child's lifetime.

One of the reasons I'm afraid to have children is because I don't want to perpetuate this bullshit on them. I may start out with the best of intentions, but there will inevitably be a time when I'm tired, upset, frustrated, and my child is doing something that makes me angry, and I'm terrified of taking my anger out on my child. Because that's the model I was given, before I was old enough to know what it meant.

I don't want to have kids unless I'm sure I can break the cycle. And I'm not sure I can.