Depends on a lot of factors though. For someone like me that grew up in a proper ghetto where I nearly joined a cult in secondary school, it helped me. At least I feared it. Words were not enough. I frustrated my parents. You can call it “abuse” but I look back with gratitude.
You have to look at the societies and systems in which softer correctional measures have worked. Why did they work there? What wrongs or moral hazards are we looking at? Who are the parents? What’s the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies in the area? Many factors.
Under Nigerian Criminal Code, parents and guardians are allowed to mete “moderate” corporal punishment on children. Certainly, there are instances where they go overboard but the alternative may not be to throw away the baby with the bath water.
In many western societies where corporal punishment is prohibited, there are immediate—and effective—correctional measures that justify these prohibitions. This overarching need to always pedestalize Africa more than it realistically is, is ridiculous.
You people are too difficult to reason with because once an idea soothes your emotional palette, you keep filing up the palette with tasty—yet biased—flavors that reinforce your views. Detach your emotions and look beyond the landscape to ask “why”.
Well, to each his own at the end of the day. Marry someone who is reasonable, kind self-aware and intelligent. These traits will help you as a parent to draw a line between discipline and abuse. And when neither is necessary at all.
But to say all forms of discipline are abuses is quite a stretch. You may say it traumatized you but your experience is not universal. And sometimes what traumatized you was also necessary to shape another part of you that needed a better framing.
If you don’t slap the wrist, you could use words. But words could be just as damaging or even more. You could be more diplomatic in speech and then it yields no result. These conversations are nuanced and anyone who tunnel-visions is not ready for an honest discourse.
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