Let's Talk about Our Prejudice against Children

These seem to be the general drift one gets from the torrent of online comments following a recent video of a young primary school girl, who was made to kneel at a public carpark before a man, allegedly her father, slapped her hard on the face. The force of the impact made her head snap back until she almost lost her balance. While many strongly condemned what the father did, those who defended him are equally loud. Examples of these could be found in the public comments made on The Straits Times Facebook post, which features the news article (to include reference to source):

"Please respect the family. It's up to the parents to decide how to raise their children."

"It's just tough love. Something which the strawberry generation would not understand."

"Parents got their own way to discipline their own kids. So what's the big deal?"

"Just let the parents discipline the kids. I remember my parents ordered dust feeder about two dozen every month just for me. Do I hate my parents? No. Do I grow up being bitter? No. Because I know my mom and dad wanted to discipline me."

“And this my fellow Singaporeans is how the strawberry generation is made. People complaining that parents are too harsh on their children. They grow up without proper discipline. And in the end, become pai gia (bad kid). Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

"I think we should all mind our own business and let parents bring up their child their way!"

Here is where we need to question and challenge the premise of such worldview. Should corporal or physical punishment even be accepted as one of the ways of educating or disciplining a child? Is there any truth in the claim that children who were never caned would turn out to be problematic adults? These are important questions that ought to be deliberated if we are serious about not merely paying lip service to the commitment of acting in the best interest of children.

Cases of child abuse tend to be trivialised as isolated cases that involve individuals who might be undergoing depression or some form of mental stress at the time they committed the abuse. The issue, however, needs to be considered as part of a larger social problem, namely society’s prejudice against children – or what has been termed ‘childism’ by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, which is also the title of her book published in 2012. Childism is based on a worldview that perceives children as rightful properties of adults, not dissimilar to domesticated animals or the medieval concept of slaves. Such a worldview rationalises and justifies a broad continuum of acts that are not in the best interests of children. This includes the absolute authority that adults have over children which legitimises the adults’ power to control and make children subservient to the adults’ needs and interests.

Childism also perceives children as a burdensome responsibility. As such, rather than investing time and energy in trying to understand their needs, it would be much easier to break their ever inquisitive and creative spirit by moulding them from young to be compliant and obedient. We have seen in many instances where parents are just not willing to entertain their child’s inquisitiveness. Whenever a child asks too many questions, he or she will be told to shut up. Or whenever children are found to be too noisy while they are playing, they will be shouted at for annoying the adults around them or disrupting the adults who are watching a television programme. A child’s inalienable right to play and ask questions is constantly denied and blatantly disregarded.

This is the problem when a parochial worldview is deeply rooted in society – when we still hold strongly to the scriptural formula of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ or what the Malays would say “sayang anak, tangan-tangankan”, which literally means “if you love your child, beat him or her”. This worldview claims that the child will always remember the pain inflicted on him or her whenever the child intends to do something bad.

Such coercive or what has been referred to as authoritarian approach to parenting views children as a herd of wild animals that needs to be domesticated from an early age before they get out of control. Proponents of authoritarian parenting would rationalise it by being nostalgic about how they were brought up in a similar fashion – when their parents would beat them with the cane, the belt, or the more brutal wooden plank just to teach them a lesson. These methods, according to the proponents, are effective in moulding their character to be the good and responsible adults they are today.

THE WAY WE VIEW CHILDREN

This attitude is rooted in the belief that children are like a piece of white cloth that needs to be filled with the right colours by adults starting with parents at home to the teachers in school, as well as the rest of the social institutions that play a part in the process of moulding the future.

The problem with such approach is that, more often than not, there tends to be a blatant disregard for what children actually think and feel over what the adults considered as ‘good’ for or at the ‘best interests’ of the child. As a result, every time a child is beaten or physically hurt in any way, such as being caned, pinched, slapped or ear pulled by parents or teachers, it is seen as necessary for the child’s own sake. The negative impact on the child, be it physical or mental, is never a concern.

One of the negative side effects resulting from a coercive method of parenting is the message sent to children. What corporal punishment really teaches them is that every problem can be solved through coercion and physical violence. It also instills the idea that they can gain power by subjugating others. Such an ideology developed from a repressive approach to parenting is what Swiss psychologist Alice Miller referred to in her book For Your Own Good (1980) as ‘poisonous pedagogy’, which “imparts to the child from the beginning false information and beliefs that have been passed on from generation to generation and dutifully accepted by the young even though they are not only unproven but are demonstrably false”².

Some of these include the belief that parents are deserving of respect simply because they are parents, whereas children are undeserving of respect simply because they are children; that obedience makes a child strong and that severity and coldness are good preparation for life; that responding to a child’s needs is wrong; that neither parents nor God would survive being offended; and that parents are always right³

In contrast, a humanistic approach that respects children as individuals who possess their own thoughts and feelings; that provides them with the necessary space to develop their own critical faculty by getting them to make their own choices and decisions; that chooses to solve problems by talking and reasoning, not by beating or other forms of coercion; is most likely to produce a generation that is responsible, that respects each other and that possesses a more empathetic and loving character.

Such an approach, as author and lecturer Alfie Kohn has pointed out, “constitutes a commitment to taking children seriously. It means treating them as people whose feelings and desires and questions matter… as someone with a unique point of view, with very real fears and concerns often quite different from our own, and with a distinctive way of reasoning which is not merely cute”⁴.

As long as we ignore, as long as we keep on legitimising and rationalising acts and ways of thinking that reflect a social prejudice against children, there will never be an end to child abuse, which may even persist to a point where more children will be violated.

It is hence necessary for every adult in our society to be concerned towards every child in our midst. The problem is that many of us are still hesitant to report to the authorities cases of child abuse that are happening at home or in school, even in the face of clear evidence. Some of the reasons given are that we should not meddle with a family problem or that it is just the way some parents bring up their child and there is nothing we can do about it.

Such irresponsible attitude will be the cause of many other children being abused or leaving us prematurely as a result of being violated and betrayed on a daily basis. Those who are currently victims of abuse will continue to suffer in silence.