Is this abuse?

baronfulmen:

rin-ootori:

Is it abuse to hit someone? In any situation?

If it’s in anger?
As “punishment?”
For fun?

Anytime you hit someone it’s abuse, isn’t it? No matter what?

My mom thinks “spanking” is not hitting and not abuse.

I strongly feel that hitting in any situation is abuse, please, please, reblog if you agree. Spread this. I want to prove a point, not just to her but to myself.

I’ve posted this before on Tumblr, but this seems like a good place to do it again. I got spanked as a kid, and it wasn’t traumatic for me. It didn’t hurt, the way my mom did it – not really. And I had a good relationship with her, and she didn’t do it often, and when she did I was being a little shit. So it mainly served to let me know she was super serious this time. Years pass, I meet the girl I will later marry, and we compare notes and find we’re on the same page about spanking. It’s fine, it’s not abuse, we are totally going to spank our kids as needed when we have some.

But then we decide pregnancy sounds horrible and for whatever reason neither of us have that psychological drive to have biological offspring so we say what the hell, let’s do foster care. There are plenty of kids already in the world that need a place to stay. We go to the classes and learn that there a very strict no spanking rule.

This makes sense. These kids may have been beaten. And spanking, no matter how gentle, could trigger existing trauma. And we nod, and start trying to think how we’ll get by without that option. And then the other parents in the class start talking about spanking… sweet Jesus.

All the stories have the same disclaimer: “I turned out fine”.

But the details were all different. Belts, sticks, socks with potatoes in them, fists, boots, wire hangers… my wife and I were horrified. And we realized that these people all thought we were talking about the same thing. My mother’s gentle swats on my butt that barely stung for even an instant through layers of clothing, or beating a child’s bare back with whatever was handy. Same thing. So that was lesson one for us: supporting spanking supports all forms of spanking. You can’t say “spanking is fine” without people around you applying their own definition and that means “beating the living shit out of your kid” for a SHOCKING number of people.

Lesson two came over time, once we had kids: spanking is totally unnecessary. What matters is consistency, love, empathy, and (whenever possible) logical consequences. Our kids aren’t angels, but they’re not brats. They’re really excellent, actually. Spanking. Was. Not. Needed. And from all the people I’ve seen parenting around me over the years, it doesn’t work as well as other methods. Not for the mostly good kids, not for the mostly bad kids. It’s an all around losing strategy.

So even if you want to argue that spanking – the way YOU do it – isn’t abusive, your support of spanking gains you nothing and supports the abuse of others. That’s the best case scenario.