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Parents Who Dared To Discipline
A retrospective on growing up in the age of Dare to Discipline.
I was the oldest member of my pack of siblings, and the oldest can sometimes get the short end of the stick when it comes to parenting. This is not necessarily an indictment of parents, because most do the best they can with what they have at the time. The oldest child is a blank canvas, the one where they learn what works and what does not work before applying what they’ve learned to raise subsequent children.
My parents raised me on a strange doctrine called Dare to Discipline. It was a sadistic philosophy, sold as grounded in Biblicism and pro-social values, that encouraged corporal punishment. A misbehaving child should be struck with a switch, belt, or paddle, which should be kept visible at all times as a reminder of authority.
Regardless of the theological or psychological soundness (or lack thereof) of the doctrine, one thing is for certain: it made its author and his organization very wealthy and powerful on the backs of parents worried about changes in society and on the rears of the children they struck in the name of discipline.
