Risks of Harm from Spanking Confirmed by Analysis of Five Decades of Research

[hunter]

40. I had the feral upbringing, my parents having too many kids, too fast.

It was indulgent too, in the sense we knew our needs as children would be met, plus a little extra sometimes. We had clothing, even if it wasn't the clothing we wanted, and we had food, even if it wasn't the food we wanted.

I never got all the radio and computer parts I desired, but I got enough to pursue my obsession. And books. If my parents won't buy a book for a kid it's because they don't have any money.

My parents are artists. When they were not working their day jobs they were pursuing their art, and we were largely unsupervised.

Our parents have interesting friends too. LGBT guests were safe and unremarkable to us as children. Society being what it was then (and still is in many communities), we also learned to be protective.

Some kids in the neighborhood were told by their parents they were not allowed to visit our house. I always figured it was the anarchy that bothered authoritarian parents, but it was the fact that our house was a refuge for kids whose parents punished them, and later in our teen years especially, a place with adults who dealt directly and honestly with issues of human sexuality.

My parents were feral children too.

Punishment is the most useless thing in the world. Children have to be trained to accept it. Even then it rarely sticks, but it does do a lot of damage to the individual punished, and to the overall society.