Proper parenting is always authoritarian
According to the standards of modern education, a cane stands for brute force and therefore has no place in the classroom. According to Western psychology, a child suffers lifelong trauma from being slapped, spanked or even flogged. Our great-grandparents must therefore have caused tremendous psychological damage. Oddly enough, you don't feel any of that.
For many generations, it was quite natural to raise one's own children strictly, and really strictly at that. Mostly they grew up within the extended family and not only their own parents were authorized to train them, but also grandma and grandpa. And training, that didn't mean a lot of words and coaxing back then. No, if a child didn't parry, then he or she would feel the rod and the matter would be settled.
That hasn't changed much today either. In the vast majority of countries in the world, nobody considers a problem what is actually completely clear. Children have to obey, everybody says, and nobody would think of asking a psychologist about it. Children also have to learn, and no educator would think that this could work completely without punishment.
In central Europe, the whole thing is treated as a problem and there nothing seems to be wrong with children terrorizing an entire family because no one puts them in their place. Because children learn quickly and once they figure out that it works, they just scream around until the parents give up in exasperation and the little one gets his way. In the rest of the world things are completely different. The rascal simply gets a slap right on site and a proper caning at home. The bratty girl is stripped naked and father's leather belt teaches her how to behave. She certainly won't be traumatized by it. But she will learn in a very impressive way that she has gone too far.
That's how our grandparents used to do it. And this is how children have been brought up for many generations. In the past it was not uncommon for a family to produce seven or more children, so there was no time for psychology. It was obey or it will hurt.
Since the printing press was invented, there have also been educational guides. But today's titles in this genre were written by psychologists who spread a lot of theory but have little practical experience. They tend to describe raising children to be a problem that only experts can actually handle, while the overwhelmed mother and father next door can only do everything wrong. Up until the 20th century, however, such books still carried a totally different message. They described above all what you wanted to teach a child, what standards it should meet and what to do if it didn't parry.
A child has to obey was the general knowledge. If he didn't do that and thought he could resist his father and mother, then it was really only a question of how such a stubborn brat could be punished most effectively.
At a single-digit age, a few rough slaps with the palm of your hand were usually enough and of course they were administered to the bare buttocks. Only when this was bright red and the child screamed at the top of its lungs to realize that it had had a painful experience was this educational measure considered successful. However, the older the child got, the more stringent measures were used.
Although there were very different preferences around the world, what they all had in common was that they hurt extremely and were usually associated with long-lasting marks. Buttocks that were treated with a hazelnut whip or a cane show bloodshot welts after just a few strokes, which take many days before they gradually fade away. And buttocks that have endured the repeated impact of a paddle will end up so swollen that the child won't be able to sit up for a while.
The educators of earlier times agreed on one thing: effective punishment had to be applied to the exposed buttocks. This was the only way to place individual blows in a targeted manner allowing the educator to judge exactly when the desired effect of the punishment had been achieved. Even in the otherwise extraordinarily prudish England of Victorian times, it was taken for granted that a rebellious daughter, an unruly wife and even less a lazy maid had to be stripped at least to the navel before the cane, rod or leather thong should be used.
Most children and young people in the western world today neither know from their own experience what a stick, a rod or a leather strap feels like on bare skin, nor can they imagine being brought up in this way. Nevertheless, this is exactly what is still the daily reality in most countries around the world. Because it has always been that way and because it has evidently not harmed countless generations.
Anyone who has been socialized in the western world will probably be indignant about this. Only very few people are aware that it was only two generations ago when people in their own culture didn't think otherwise. The generation that is just dying out can still vividly remember a youth when there were strict rules and any form of disobedience was severely punished. But there are also families in which the ancient values still live on and the children are still brought up according to the well tried and tested values.
"In our house there is an old leather belt that hasn't seen pants for a long time. It's a good three fingers wide and hangs on a hook in the hallway where it's clearly visible. There is also a cane as thick as a finger in an umbrella stand right next to it. If you don't know the meaning of these objects, you probably won't see anything out of the ordinary in them. But our children always have a bad feeling when they walk past them.” These are the words of a father who, for understandable reasons, prefers to remain anonymous. We normally prefer not to talk about traditional educational methods in this country. This is practiced silently behind closed doors and even the children are embarrassed when friends and neighbors find out about it.
“We have two teenage girls and a boy who has just started primary school. But when it comes to education, we don't differentiate between girls and boys. Anyone who messes something up has to pay for it, just like our parents did. Both my wife and I are the result of a strict upbringing and are convinced that an occasional spanking has never hurt anyone." The father stating these words is obviously convinced that he is doing exactly the right thing. He also remembers an incident which happened only recently:
It was about stolen apples and a neighbor who complained that his eldest daughter was unabashedly eating someone else's fruit. Now, of course, theft is a serious offense that a strict family man cannot let go unpunished. So the proven family ritual was announced and it looked like this:
"I confronted her about what she had done, and she immediately paled when she knew I had found out about it. Of course, she knew what was in store for her now and because she was a girl, it only took a few moments for the first tears to roll down her cheeks.”
As an experienced family man, he was of course not impressed by this. Instead, it was just a matter of: “Go to your room and get ready for the strap. We just call the old leather belt in the hallway 'the strap' and our thirteen-year-old knows exactly how it is used for punishment.”
With her eyes downcast in embarrassment, the girl made her way upstairs to her room where her punishment was normally carried out. “My wife and I see the upbringing of the children as a joint task that can only succeed if the parents agree, and the children do not have the opportunity to play mother and father against each other. We let the girl stew for a while to give her time to tremble and ponder her transgression. Then we went up together. Me with the leather belt in hand and her to make sure the little thief took her rebuke as expected.”
She was standing in a corner of the room, facing the wall. Her clothes lay neatly folded on a chair. As expected, she was naked. At thirteen she was only at the beginning of her development as a woman, but her hips were already expanding and her bottom showed an unmistakably feminine shape.
"On the bed with you," was the command and she did what she had known from previous punishments. She knelt at the foot of the bed, her mother rolled up the duvet and she bent over it, her buttocks being the highest point of her body. Throughout the process, she whimpered and begged for forgiveness. But she probably knew only too well that all her whining wouldn't do her any good. She deserved punishment and punishment she would get.
Her father said no more words and immediately set about carrying out the sentence. He folded the leather belt into a loop, swung wide and let the snappy leather reach its target with a full, slapping sound. Immediately life came into the naked body. The girl reared up and kicked her legs wildly. But her mother was at the other end, holding the screaming brat by the wrists in an iron grip.
The angry father knew what he was doing. Again and again, he swung the belt, and with each ominous sound another red flaring weal marked the body of the thief. She shrieked with each blow, and her reactions left no doubt that the punishment was on target. It was probably more than sixty lashes when father put the belt aside and looked at his work with satisfaction. From the thighs to both buttocks, the leather had done a great job and left a picture of criss-crossing and swelling welts that the girl would surely feel for a few days.
"Write her another excuse for gym class," he instructed his wife before leaving the scene. From an early age, his children were used to being punished for wrongdoing. They also knew that for major offenses, it was either the cane or the strap. They didn't know any different. But they also knew that they deserved every punishment and that afterward all was forgiven and forgotten. That was fair and so far, even the older girls had never thought of protesting against their upbringing. Still, it was better to keep the matter in the family and not give anyone needless cause to get upset about it. Hence the written request to exempt the girl from sports lessons.
As I said, in the middle of Europe such educational methods may be met with a shake of the head or even call the authorities into action. In most of the world however, no one would even think about it for a second. A young brat screwed up. She has been punished for it and now has welts on her body. So what?
