-Disgusted
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Thanks for writing in.
"Spare the Rod, spoil the child" as a concept comes from Bible, specifically the book of Proverbs, chapter 13, verse 24. The exact text reads, in the NRSV translation,
"Those who spare the rod hate their children,
but those who love them are diligent to discipline them."
The idea of "spare the rod, spoil the child" is not in and of itself a bad one, nor does it command child abuse. This is not a prescribed punishment, merely a popular one in it's time. Discipline is the real point of the proverb, and it is hardly limited to the Bible. Our concepts on what kind of discipline are appropriate varies practically person to person (often based on their own childhood experience) but in general we agree that children need to be disciplined as part of socialization, and to not do so (to "spoil" the child, so to speak,) is actually neglect.
As some readers may or may not be aware, the book of Proverbs is a collection of "wisdom sayings," or proverbs, truisms and generalities passed down by the Hebrew people until they were eventually collected and published together, eventually added to the Hebrew scriptures. Advice given in this book ranges from how much one should eat when dining with a king to the most admirable qualities one can find in a wife. (Spoiler: find a wise woman.) And as with all such sayings, these are things that are claimed to be "generally true," or rules of thumb. You know the sort of thing.
That sometimes doesn't jive well with how people are often taught to read the Bible, looking for commandments and hard truths, rather than truisms. So you have some people holding up "spare the rod, spoil the child" as a command, as if physical beatings with implements were the Biblically mandated form of punishment... but it's not. That isn't how the book of Proverbs was meant to work.
The issue is always with us but has been brought back into light with the situation surrounding Adrian Peterson. One of the more telling things to me, in this case, is that Peterson, by all accounts normally a very stand up guy, told the truthful account of what happened. He isn't denying anything, gave a complete account to authorities when demanded. and seems confused at the reaction.
This is not standard abusive behavior. Normally an abuser hides the abuse, will deny it, threaten people to keep quiet. Peterson has followed none of these behaviors, This isn't to exonerate him... clearly, hitting a child with a switch so that you leave horrible sores all over their body is going far too far. But I don't think that with Peterson we have a classic abuse case. We have a case of poorly education on discipline, and it is likely that with Peterson, a deeply religious person, heard the Proverb above taught the wrong way, and came to believe that violence was the important part, rather than the discipline.
Peterson has a great deal of education ahead of him in that matter, and hopefully, in time, he can come to grips with what he did wrong and recognize that while a loving parent does discipline their child, the circumstances of what that discipline looks like can vary, and should vary, between what his parents did to him, and what he can do to his child, that the point is not to hurt them, but to teach them.
I think that Peterson and his family will be okay, in the end, and that this whole ordeal will be a great learning experience for quite a lot of people. My disgust is reserved, not for Adrian Peterson, but for a lot of the people backing him up.
The next person I hear say; "My parents beat the tar out of me and I turned out all right..." well, I probably won't actually DO anything to them but I will be quite irritated. Peterson may very likely have meant well... all his behaviors suggest that to me. But he was still in the WRONG. Punishment with intent to hurt is completely unacceptable. It crosses the line from a switching to a caning, from a spanking to a beating, from punishment to violence, from discipline to abuse. And that had to be his goal, because there is no way that he couldn't have noticed what was happening.
Child abuse is against the law, and even so, is rampant in the world. And even if Peterson did mean well, his misunderstanding of the nature of discipline was criminally negligent on his part, and given that the charge against him is negligence, I think the law is getting it right. HE will probably figure it out. He's a smart guy, and by most accounts, a caring guy. He seemed to be horrified at the idea of being a child abuser and once he learns that how he was treated was not an appropriate method of discipline, I think he will do what it takes to learn a right way, and likely become a great ally of the movement to educate families on proper methods of child discipline.
But to those who, even after knowing the facts, clamor that he was in the right? Who continue to misuse the Proverb to say that parents MUST use violence against their children, who downplay or hide the obvious injuries, who hide behind tradition and patriarchy rather than face the fact that the way they were treated, and indeed, the way they are treating others, is and was never justified? That DOES follow the abuse pattern.
Which is why we still need to keep paying attention to these things. Discipline is very, very important. And when done wrong, (either through neglect or going too far) it can harm a child, and the generations that follow.
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