Well, there are annoying posters, and then there are posters who are so predictable in their entrenched and just plain wrong positions that I find them rather boring. In saying that, I do want to make it perfectly clear that there are intelligent, thinking posters who are radically conservative and retrograde who I do enjoy reading. But I certainly could not sharpen my edges on people who not only spank their children but insist it is the morally right thing to do, for example.
Someone who shall remain anonymous sent me a private message and suggested that I post some interesting material on spanking to you. I am fairly certain you do not actually have a learning curve, and make no effort to absorb material that does not fit into your world view, but since I feel quite sorry for your children, believe that others may find the material interesting, and agree with the sentiment in this interview that the way you treat your children affects society as a whole, I will go ahead and share it:
Interview by Noreen Taylor
Alice Miller pioneered the idea that violence towards children engenders violent
adults. Her latest book reveals that many of this century's worst dictators were
beaten as children.
For many years Alice Miller was a lone voice in the dark. Her message, devastatingly simple
but with the kind of implications people refused to face, was considered far too controversial:
violence towards children engenders a violent society.
Gradually, though, she has won wide acceptance around the world for her central theory that
abuse runs in the family. The slapped child of one generation becomes the abuser of the next.
Violence towards "a bad child" may create a bad adult and eventually foster the creation of a
bad society.
Her latest book, Paths Of Life, takes this argument still further, declaring that tyranny and
totalitarianism are born in the nursery. Having studied some of the worst dictators known to the
modern world - Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Ceaucescu - she says all four were systematically
beaten throughout their childhood, and all denied the pain.
Dr Miller says: "These men learned very early to glorify cruelty and to be able to justify it to
themselves without remorse." Crucially, they were also born into societies in which violence
towards children was commonplace. In Hitler's case, for instance, harsh rearing of children was
fashionable in Germany in the 1900s. So there is a causal connection between that practice
and the terror unleashed 40 years later by so many willing executioners.
If that seems far-fetched, then we must follow Miller's path of self-discovery and enlightenment.
Born in 1923 in Poland to what she describes as ordinary middle-class parents - father, a
banker and mother, a housewife - she imagined her childhood to have been "normal."
She says: "My parents wanted the best for me, but like so many others at that time they had not
the slightest idea of a baby's need for attachment, loving contact, respect and orientation. "My
mother had been emotionally neglected during her childhood, so that her body had no
recollection of what it meant to be loved and cared for. Her only concern was to make me
obedient as soon as possible. And she succeeded. I became the good girl my parents needed
me to be. Today I know that such an achievement was only possible through systematic
corporal punishment.
"My parents' strategy demanded a huge price: the repression of my own feelings and needs.
Consequently, when I became a mother, I couldn't understand my first baby the way it needed
to be understood. Although I never hit either of my two children, I was sometimes careless and
neglectful of that first child."
Miller's first discipline was philosophy and she obtained a doctorate from the University of
Basle. She then switched to psychoanalysis, training in Zurich as a Freudian and working for
20 years as an analyst and teacher. But her road away from this conformism, and on to her
own path of self-discovery, began in 1973 when she took up painting. "Until then, I believed my
childhood had been a good one, but my body and my hands knew more than my mind. They
showed me in my painting that I had survived a horror, and that I had repressed this knowledge
because no-one was there to understand."
The result of her inner turmoil, and her resolution of it, stimulated her first book, The Drama Of
Being A Child, a totally new contribution to the eternal debate on the root causes of violence
and its devastating toll on society. It was the opening salvo in her struggle to change the way
we think about our treatment of children.
The central question, to which she has devoted the last 20 years of her work, seems
deceptively simple: why is it so hard not to smack a child? Why do people who wouldn't dream
of striking their friends slap their children?
Her answer, equally straightforward, compels us to re-examine both our history as children and
our roles as parents:
"Beating children teaches short term obedience, but in the long term, only violence and anxiety.
"As beaten children, we have to learn to forget our physical and psychic pain. This blocking out
enables us to continue punishing our own children while we insist to ourselves: smacks teach
lessons. Sadly, all we are accomplishing is sowing the seeds of cruelty for another generation.
"Almost everyone agrees that we should not maltreat children, yet they also claim that corporal
punishment is not a maltreatment, labeling it as 'educational discipline'. This is a dangerous
error which can only be solved by a law preventing the punishment of children within the home
as well as school. The goal of this law should not be the punishment of parents. It should
educate them into understanding that every beating is a maltreatment, both socially and
emotionally."
This central message, born out of self-knowledge and from what she had learned from dealing
with thousands of patients, gradually gained Miller recognition as one of leading figures in the
study of abused children, in spite of years of skepticism from her peers.
Her seven best-selling books have become an inspiration. Novelist Edna O'Brien has
described her as the child expert "every parent should read." Another writer, Sara Paretsky,
believes Miller's books "changed the way I think about my life".
Many professionals in the field also agree, such as Brenda Robinson-Fell, an independent
child abuse consultant based in Brighton who works for a variety of bodies, including the
NSPCC, the police and social services departments.
"Alice Miller was a pioneer," she says. "Her breakthrough was in asserting that parents carry
responsibility for the adults their children become. Fortunately, her beliefs have become
mainstream, and like many of my colleagues I regard her as one of the main influences on my
generation of professionals. We owe her a great deal."
But the parent reading for the first time of Miller's work will doubtless have two lingering
questions. The first is the most common defense for slapping: surely the occasional smack
can't possibly cause any lasting damage?
The second: how do we account for the fact that every smacked child doesn't become a Hitler?
Surely, I asked Miller, an infrequent cuff, or a spontaneous slap delivered in a moment's fury
when one child is caught being cruel to another, is reasonable?
Not so, says Miller. "The claim that mild punishment, such as smacks or slaps, have no
detrimental effects is still widespread because we got this message from our parents, who got
it from theirs.
"It is this conviction which helps the child to minimize or numb their suffering so that each
generation is subjected to the seemingly harmless effects of physical correction. 'What hasn't
harmed me cannot harm my child', we tell ourselves. Such a conclusion is wrong because
people have never challenged their assumptions."
Violent behavior in teenagers, especially young male rapists can, according to Miller, be linked
with early emotional neglect, not only with brutal treatment. "I think violent teenagers are
demonstrating what happened to them when they were small. I have no doubts about that. It
might not have been a harsh discipline, but through emotional neglect, lack of warm friendly
contact, substituted by 'spoiling' (buying lots of expensive objects to replace love) a child learns
to repress its own history.
"The more cruelty is denied, the less these young people are able to feel, to confront the actual
reasons for their distress. Therefore the urge towards destructive behavior grows stronger. "As
beaten children we learn very misleading lessons. Because the slaps come from the most
important figures in our lives we believe such behavior is normal and beneficial. I am not the
only one to speak out against such treatment of children. Hundreds or articles and books are
written by other experts on the dangerous consequences and uselessness of corporal
punishment, yet many people continue to act and think as though such information did not exist.
"I often hear mothers saying they smack their babies without violence just to teach them a
lesson. Once, a nice young mother who breast fed her little boy complained to me that he
seemed a very anxious child. I asked if she thought the child might be waiting for the next slap?
"Never, she said. At 15 months old he was far to young to make such connections. I then asked
if she had been beaten as a child. Yes, she said, all the time, by both parents. I asked her how
she would feel if a friend told her she was being beaten by her husband. Would she advise her
to leave? Of course, she said.
"Why then was she able to sympathize with her friend, but not her child? Simple. Her
upbringing taught her this is the correct way to treat children."
Opposing Miller are those who claim that a law forbidding parents to hit their children brings us
uncomfortably close to totalitarianism. Many people believe that smacking children remains a
private right, and would have grave misgivings if government legislation intruded into an area
as sacrosanct as the home.
Her answer is emphatic: "You can't claim the right to play with nuclear weapons on your territory
because they belong to you. Similarly, society's interests must go before your pleasure and
your habits, and the government must defend these interests.
"Parents may claim the right to hit children when they are small as though they are property. Yet
as soon as those children become violent delinquents or drug abusers the same parents are
eager to turn the problem over to society. The anonymous taxpayer has to fund the hospitals
and prisons these once so eagerly disciplined teenagers will need."
What then of the argument that so many smacked children do not turn into tyrants? "Of course
not all children who have been violently treated grow into monsters. The key factor in such
instances is the presence of what I call 'a helping witness', someone who serves as a protector
or friend. It could be a relative, a grandparent for example, or a teacher, or even a neighbor.
Thanks to this good experience these children are not forced to repeat the abuse."
Miller's theory doesn't rest only on her observations as a psychoanalyst. She has found
confirmation in the latest research by neurobiologists who have proved the influence of
experiences during the first three years of life to the developing structure of the brain.
"For some years now, it has been possible to prove, thanks to the use of new therapeutic
methods, that repressed, traumatic experiences in childhood are stored up in the body and,
although remaining unconscious, exert their influences even in adulthood. In addition, electronic
testing of the fetus has revealed a fact previously unknown to most adults: a child responds to,
and develops, both tenderness and cruelty from the very beginning."
She is also convinced that the terrible savagery in Rwanda is also explained by the cruel way in
which infants are socialized in that country. "Wherever I look, it is the same. What we do to our
children affects all of society."
This article appeared in the September 7, 1999 Times of London, in a slightly shortened version.
naturalchild.com |
