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A Culture of Punishment

July 2, 2020

healthy relationship

A guest post by Dr. Amanda Barnes Cook
Amanda is my amazing friend, former blogger at Respectful Parent with her P.hD in Political Theory. I think you’ll like her!

 

There’s this thing that happens in parenting when your kid takes a stand at the same time you do. You each create a narrative about the situation wherein any kind of compromise would be a failure and dig in your heels. Often these situations arise when you as the parent think, imperiously, “I cannot let this stand!”

The problem is, once you’ve allowed the situation to get to this point, it’s over. Everyone loses.

I remember picking up a great parenting book on discipline when S was two. (I never thought I’d be thankful for how incredibly difficult he was at age two, but it forced us to learn quickly and for that, I am forever grateful.) The book didn’t give me a quick way to get him to comply. Instead, it taught that the parent’s job is to figure out the need or feeling behind the kid’s “misbehavior.” Instead, it taught that it’s the parent’s job to value the long-term relationship with their child over compliance in any given moment. Parenting this way requires a huge paradigm shift.

The book had this fantastic explanation for why spanking is a terrible idea, even if you’re not thinking about the ethical implications and only the pragmatics of getting that elusive compliance. So your kid “misbehaves” and you decide to spank them to teach them that the action was bad and they can’t do it again. The spanking might work at first. (Studies show it will work if the parent is perfectly consistent and if the spanking hurts enough. Chew on that for a moment.) You have this small child, and now they’re scared to do something again because of pain. You’ve also, though, unraveled the knit of your relationship. Each time you spank them again, you unravel it more. And as this happens, they’re growing! Suddenly you have a wrecked relationship and a child who is bigger and stronger than you are—what happens next? You can’t lose face. You can’t lose the argument. What happens? The violence escalates. You find yourself resorting to harsher and harsher physical abuse in a bid to maintain some notion of “authority.” Indeed, “when mild spanking occurs, severe violence is seven times as likely to follow.” And there’s no good end-game with spanking: “Adults eventually run out of punishments. When children realize it, adults become totally disarmed, especially as children enter their teens.”

(You might notice my quotes around “misbehave.” It’s important to remember that there’s no objective definition of misbehavior.)

Why am I talking about this?

I realized the other day that this experience as a parent is the closest thing I have ever experienced to the mental journey that must happen to cops who end up abusing and killing people.

Obviously policing and parenting are different, but they both rely on power disparities, and they both take place within a culture of punishment. If we’re going to dismantle white supremacy, we have to understand HOW this police behavior happens. We need to understand what it is about human beings that allows it. We need to understand it to dismantle it. And I think, for many of us, we might come to that understanding through our experience as parents.

The parenting paradigm shift I made when I was a parent to a tiny, willful toddler is not an easy one to make, largely because of how hard it is to deal with the social ramifications. What do those strangers in the store think? They think I can’t control my kid! What will my parents think? That I’m a permissive disaster who doesn’t care how her kids turn out? I’ve listened to family members talk about how kids need to be smacked in order to grow up right. I’ve been on the receiving end of extreme judgment from onlookers of all types. I spent a year calmly holding a two-year-old while he screamed his head off and tried to escape from my arms in the parking lot, refusing to get in the car, while other parents walked by with their calm children and drove off.

It required a complete break with ego. Or maybe a complete redefinition of ego.

And it’s ongoing. I know, in my heart and mind, that punishment will not stop my sensory-seeking kid from putting his mouth on the railing in the line at Disneyworld. I KNOW that no punishment would work. It’s still hard when people are looking at you like *do something!* It requires that I am willing to allow other people to think I have no authority.

(I do, actually, have authority. The authority comes from the fact that we have a good relationship. That he trusts me and tells me things and brainstorms with me for solutions to problems. The advantage of parenting this way is that he knows I’m on his team. The disadvantage is how it looks to others. There’s no possible scenario in which he would have “acceptable” behavior all the time, so that is neither a pro nor a con.)

Punishment in Society

If you’re thinking that the analogue between parenting and racist police violence is a stretch—think about the fact that Black parents often feel like they must act as punishers because of the life-and-death need to teach their children to expect and avoid violence at the hands of authorities. It is a PRIVILEGE for me to be able to parent in this alternate paradigm without worry that it might result in my kid getting murdered on the street.

Think about what all this means on an analogous societal level. Stopping racist violence would require that police, military, corrections officers, teachers—anyone in positions of authority who traffic in punishment—let go of the idea that compliance of others is the measure of their success. It would require that they are willing to look like they’ve lost authority. It would require a deep paradigm shift based on a profound belief in human relationships and disavowal of ego.

Is this possible? Is this possible for institutions whose ENTIRE EXISTENCES are premised upon using force to maintain “authority”? I honestly don’t think so. I know how hard it is as a parent, and that’s with my own children whom I love. How could police do it? The only solution is getting rid of institutions premised upon the use of force to maintain authority.

Exercise the muscle of non-punishment at home. Don’t focus on your past mistakes, but the future. See the tendency in yourself, and exorcise it. Then zoom out, and set your sights bigger.

 

You may also like:

Why Connection Isn’t a Reward for Rude Behavior

Why I don’t Spank, Punish, or Bribe My Kids 

Research on Spanking

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This is a big one! If you want your child to tell This is a big one! If you want your child to tell you the big things, it's tricky if they hear you judge others. They may not think you will accept their own truths and stop sharing with you. 

One of the most powerful ways of showing acceptance is Active Listening. When a child expresses a problem, try not to offer advice, solutions or analyze. Just listen, reflect back what you hear, and watch them continue to think the problem through on their own. 

One of the most powerful ways of showing acceptance is Active Listening. When a child expresses a problem, try not to offer advice or solutions or analyze. Just listen, reflect back what you hear and watch them continue to think the problem through on their own. 

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At the very root of P.E.T. is a belief that children aren’t bad or mischievous; they simply behave in ways that satisfy their particular needs at the moment. A baby cries because he is hungry; four-year-old sticks her hands into a can of paint and spills it on the carpet because she wants to play with the paint, to explore; a sixteen-year-old comes home later than you feel is safe because he feels a need to be with his friends.

Children have the right to meet their needs, but parents do too. It is in meeting these conflicting needs that most parent/child relationships get into trouble. Some parents insist on obedience from their children, so they get their needs met at the expense of the children meeting theirs’. Other parents, wishing to spare their children any hurt and aggravation, give in and let their children get their way, but then the parents suffer. Either way, someone is left feeling resentful of the other. It is this constant cycle of power struggles and the subsequent pent-up resentments that result that slowly begin to erode the parent/child relationship.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a third option: Both parents and children can get their needs met. 

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