Spanking children "out of love": A survivor's story of enduring disciplinary spankings

Many parents think that spanking "out of love" is something that is acceptable for parents to do, as an alternative to beating a child out of anger. Most parents these days think that if you spank a child "out of love", that then it is not harmful. I myself am a survivor of law-abiding parents, and was spanked "out of love" by my late father. He, before his death, apologized for his role in my trauma. I forgive, but I will never forget how he treated me in my formative years. 

Starting when I was 1 1/2, my father started punishing me with spanking. What he would do is send me to my room in a time-out, and occasionally, come up the stairs and visit me, in order to give me around 5-6 swats in the form of a disciplinary spanking. Apparently, he was following the advice of child trainer and pro-spanker John Rosemond. He was listening to scientific advice, but not the right scientific advice.

I am not quite convinced that the science behind the spanking issue is settled. In order for it to be settled science, you'd need all researchers to be saying the same thing. However, a vocal group of researchers think some spankings are not harmful. Thus, I go mainly by the biblical research into how the Ancient Jews and the Early Christians treated their children. The biblical research is much clearer to me, and so I focus on that. The secular research into corporal punishment is dominated by adults, without a child on the team studying the thing. All adults have an entitled bias in relation to children, and thus, we should focus on the testimony of children, including former children like me.

I was raised in a punitive manner up until age 16, when my parents gave up, and gave in to my demands. I was raised with both authoritative parenting and gentle parenting, and gentle parenting works much better than authoritative parenting. 

The authoritative parenting I received as a child was inspired by the parent lobby, not the children's rights community. Thus, I have a parental rights trauma. I hate the fact that parents had all the rights, and I had none as a child. Parental rights trauma is a form of pro-social jealousy against the parents themselves. Parents, in my view, are far more complicit in the abuse of parents than pedophiles.

Never punish a child, at all. I count it all as harmful and traumatic to me. It is just that most adults with a lawful trauma don't want to dig deep into their trauma, and so they wear it on the surface. I didn't have a choice. I am a pedophile. We as pedophiles do have trauma, and we are aware of it from day one. We as pedophiles find ways to subside the trauma as we get older. For me, my Christian faith centered my anger. I now wear an anger packet, AND I FOOKING HATE PARENTS! That, in ALL CAPS, is my traumatic anger. No child should have to bear this burden.

May God forgive my late father.