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On Violence When Raising a Child
The impact of how we are raised has long-lasting effects on the grown-ups we become.
As a person born in an eastern European country in the 80s, I have witnessed as well as experienced on my own limbs, the impact of an embedded mentality that proclaimed physical punishment as the ultimate parenting tool to raise respectful, reliable individuals.
In most eastern European cultures, the most feared object in a household by children was the belt. In most of my friends’ houses, including my own, belts were neatly arranged in a closet room, from the thinnest to the widest. Some parents, in an attempt to show themselves fair I guess, allowed their children to choose the belt they wanted to be punished with. By doing so, the child was not only faced with the terror of being beaten in a few minutes' time but also with the choice and psychological torture of deciding between the different levels of pain he was ready to endure. The thin belts burned and cut the skin; the pain lasted for days and the whistling sound they made before resting on the body was petrifying. The wide ones hurt less but left deeper, larger wounds that lasted for weeks. They wooshed in the air instead of whistled, which at times was almost comforting. Despite the long-lasting effects and the various shades of blue and red interchanging on the…