Why are we STILL Beating Our Children?
On Facebook, someone named Fabienne Marthol asked,
“A child ripped up their allowance because it wasn’t the amount his mom Said she would give him. She walked out her room and saw this [for screenshot of the picture she posted, look left]. What would you do? Not how you would feel, but what exactly would you do if this was your child’s behavior?”
The post, made one week ago, was picked up by MarketWatch. It went viral, with 13,660 Likes and 37,734 Shares.
As a journalist, I have a certain degree of skepticism about the whole thing. I know how hard it is to tear up recent US currency, and don’t think too many kids could have even done this. It’s not like ripping up a piece of notebook paper. I also question the absence of any explanation for why the mom didn’t keep her promise.
And I have to wonder what kind of parent thinks the kid needs an allowance of that magnitude—I got fifty cents and, eventually, a dollar a week through high school, which would work out to perhaps $5 to $10 in today’s money. Combined with the bus pass I had to get to school, it was adequate for my needs. My mom, who was far from wealthy, covered my housing (a room in her apartment), medical costs, and food eaten or made in the house. The allowance was for the treats I wanted in my life: a meal out, an occasional concert ticket. I’d assume that this kid’s parents are also covering the basics.
But never mind all that. What really appalls me is the number of people responding on both Facebook and Marketwatch advocating variations on beating the crap out of the ungrateful kid. And one thing I don’t question is that the reader comments are genuine.
Surely we know by now that violence only creates seething latent violence that will come out, maybe years later, against some other innocent. And overreactive violence, even more so. I still remember reeling not from the blow but from the injustice when I got spanked for something one of my sisters had done. (Spankings were rare in our house, but they did happen occasionally.) It would have been very easy to internalize that as rage. Luckily, I internalized it instead as a need to strive for justice—one of sevral catalyzing moments that created the activist I became.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering. If it had been my kid (assuming the parent had some valid reason for shorting the kid and breaking the promise), I’d have said something on the order of “if that’s how you choose to spend your allowance, that’s your decision. If the broken promise was not justifiable, I might have made up the shortfall but in a way that did not reward the behavior—and certainly would not have replaced the ruined money.
