Yeah the funny thing about getting hit by your parent is your parent is also the person that teaches the parameters of “just” punishment.

First I got spanked for something specific. Hey I deserved it.

Then I got spanked for some reason I couldn’t work out. But Dad was angry, and he was my father, so I must have done something. Did I laugh too loud? Did I talk too much about the wrong subject? Must have been something.

Then I got older, and I got punched or slammed against a wall. Well, it was Dad doing it, I must really be a terrible person. He kept saying “I get angry because I care,” so I felt this great shame that I couldn’t be a good son.

Since this is a personal statement, I’m not going to go into the clinical issues with hitting kids—that punishment-as-learning is actually horribly inexact, that—but I will say this: the reason you shouldn’t hit your kids is you are not as rational, self-controlled, or observant as you imagine yourself. To fuck your kid up forever, all you have to do is mistake anger for clarity.

Earlier today I mentioned the Pearls, who teach corporal punishment. What they don’t teach—and, in my opinion, why their adherents occasionally beat their kids to death—is doubt and mercy. Is your kid not getting it? Hit ‘em again! Still not getting it? They’re willful, again! Their books might not say “go ahead, kill the ungrateful bastards,” but their formulation of discipline doesn’t allow for parents to the ones in the wrong, nor for discipline issues to emanate from something other than defiance.