You are right about children being violent in return, X. I wish I could remember where I read this, and sorry because I cannot, but there was an article a couple of years back where someone analyzed the cases where adult children abuse their frail parents. Of course that is abominable behavior, and I am not trying to defend it, but whoever wrote the article found that in every investigated case, the parents who were abused by their children late in life beaten their children during their childhoods.
I have read very similar articles about children who kill or seriously injure their parents. And of course, in the archetypal coming of age story repeated constantly in alcoholic and abusive families, and told anecdotally by Billy himself during the first campaign, he finally grew big and strong enough that he punched his stepfather back.
Children learn violence at home, period. Children who are disturbed enough to steal a car, or commit some other juvenile crime, are ill, and need therapeutic help, firm, consistent limits, and lots of love and attention, not beatings in my opinion. |
