To condemn Adrian Peterson without considering racial context ...

[tblue37]

83. No. That is why the black parents *in the past* thought they had to

beat their kids into passivity. They really and truly believed they needed to force them to learn deference and docility. But once abusive child rearing is in the family culture, it tends to get passed down from parent to child, and thus it tends to *stay* in the culture, unless someone breaks the cycle, not only by not abusing their own kids, but also by never allowing any relatives to do so. Usually the catalyst for change is education and/or exposure to appropriate ways to teach children to behave.

Furthermore, an adult with built up frustrations, but who has no good methods for working out or dealing with his frustrations or defusing their causes, might also use child "whipping" as a way of working out his accumulated rage and frustration. A couple of days ago I posted "The Whipping," a poem by the black poet Robert Hayden. It rather clearly explains why black families often have a family legacy of beating their kids:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025532341

The Whipping

Robert Hayden

The old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs.

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike memories:

My head gripped in bony vise
of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful

Words could bring, the face that I
no longer knew or loved . . .
Well, it is over now, it is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,

And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged—
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.

It isn't just black families that have to break the cycle, of course, but since they had good reason to fear the consequences if their little boys didn't learn docility, the pattern had an extra strong foundational impetus.

I am white. My parents were moderately abusive, as were many parents of their generation, though less so than parents in their families' previous generations. Three of my five siblings (3 sisters) have (now adult) kids. Two of them never once smacked their kids. One did, but she had a very rough life, and I believe stress was a major factor in her losing control when her kids drove her up the wall as she struggled to raise them all by herself, with no money, no breaks, and no help. Even she, however, never did more than smack them. She didn't use a belt as our father did, nor did she pull hair, as Mom sometimes did. She left no bruises, either. IOW, the intensity of the abuse often decreases down the generations if education and exposure to social disapprovsl of hitting kids are there.

Certainly emotional immaturity is a big factor in child abuse. Parents who have not developed mature ways of handling frustration might hit their kids even when they *know* better. But there are other factors involved, too. General community approval is a major influence, so when everyone around you honestly believes that hitting a child is appropriate (and loving!) discipline, then that is normative. Even when a person raised in such a milieu enters a larger social environment that rejects the values he grew up with, it is difficult for most to completely shake off those deeply ingrained beliefs.

When a person thus raised is flooded with the frustrations that attend child rearing, it takes an unusual degree of emotional maturity and self-control not to revert to hitting.

I am on a mobile. I am going to post this as is and then complete my dissertation on my desktop.

I ran a daycare home for 18 years--playing a major role in raising 35 children besides my own two. I didn't have to yell or hit to get good behavior from the kids, even though my own parents yelled and hit us all the time. But I understand why my parents did that: 1) they really did not know any better, and 2) they were always stressed and frustrated, but they were not emotionally mature enough to handle those stresses, so they took them out on their 6 kids, who, admittedly, could drive them up a wall.

The fact that I understand why they abused us, and that I don't hate them for it but instead feel compassion for the stresses that they were dealing with does not mean that I excuse child abuse or would ever commit such abuses myself. No--understanding and explaining is not excusing at all. Understanding why something happens does not mean that you think that it is a good thing or that it should continue to happen.