Love and Not Love
I recently saw a post on facebook about a study showing that spanking is harmful even if the parent has a warm and loving relationship with the child.
Wow, ok, so this really set some wheels spinning for me…
Inflicting physical harm or pain on other human beings is considered violence, aggression, assault or abuse. Nowhere else in our culture do we sanction inflicting physical pain/harm on another human being, not even on violent criminals, unless they have been given the death penalty.
So to inflict physical pain on your child while being super loving and warm at the same time to me is a form of psychological abuse. Not only are you hurting your child physically, you are then creating the illusion that it is a form of love and that the child’s natural and appropriate response to being hurt is wrong. It creates extreme confusion in the child, causing them to question their sense of reality and creates a connection between violence and abuse and warmth and love.
(I highly recommend reading For Your Own Good by Alice Miller to get a much fuller and deeper understanding of this destructive dynamic of abuse and denial of appropriate emotional response.)
For a parent to hit a child without the pretense of warmth, care, and love, brings a lot more clarity for the child about their experience and an ability to recognize it as wholly painful and hurtful. I am in no-way condoning abuse physical or otherwise, however this form of violence at least does not then pretend it to be something loving and caring.
How many places and ways do we disguise abuse or hurt as love?
Might our confusion come from this very source: That from early childhood we have been taught to confuse love and abuse until we have trouble telling the difference?
As Jacob Holdt of American Pictures explores, childhood oppression is the root of all oppression, and it is only through distress patterns that were set in childhood that we can tolerate oppression in any form.
And so too, the same abusive patterns get put in place in childhood to the point that we can no-longer clearly tell the difference between love and abuse because abuse too often has been presented as love.
To some this may sound absurd, but if you’ve ever found yourself in the confusing dynamics of relationship that at some point you finally acknowledge as abusive, then maybe not so absurd after all.
As I thought about this abuse/warmth dichotomy, it dawned on me that this is the very same pattern that often shows up in abusive relationships. Physical harm/abuse followed by warmth and comfort for the pain of the victim by the abuser. And it’s presented in the context of how much that person actually really loves you. Is this not what parents are doing with their children when they hurt them but then act warm and loving and caring at the same time?
Of course there are degrees here, and abuse is a strong word, but these are the dynamics and patterns that I see and the nature of the dynamic is the same, no matter what the degree of pain or harm: We are presenting something that is not love as love and denying that it is something else.
Love must take into consideration the feelings, needs, desires and preferences of the other person. Love’s intention is of contributing to the well-being of that other person.
Punishment, though sometimes intended “for your own good” is intended to create suffering in another person. Punishment is antithetical to love.
I know there are those of you out there that were spanked as a child and declare it did you no harm or was actually good for you. Not all that long ago, it was culturally acceptable to spank women.
While spanking children is still culturally acceptable, and sometimes quite popular, research and expert understanding recognize that it does more harm than good. The belief in punishment, in acts of aggression and violence to maintain power, to me is just a continued perpetuation of the cycles of violence and oppression. Of domination and power-over that ultimately continues to perpetuate violence and abuse.
Let us not disguise our use of force and power to punish, of aggression or violence as love, because it isn’t.
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
May we truly know what LOVE is and not confuse it with anything that is not truly love.
Next week I’ll help you uncover some of your subconscious definitions and confusions about love so that you can truly know what LOVE is and not confuse it with anything else.
My relationships with my children and grandchildren have been the most challenging. I believe we are sent our children to teach and heal us what w we need.
Hi Elana
I read this post
very cool
what becomes difficult is that after parents read this kind of thing, which of course we resonate with strongly, we might then get confused with a situation where we are saying ‘no’ to a child, and it IS for their own good. Of course this is in no way punishment, which is the intentional infliction of pain, but it is a fine line because that ‘no’ or maybe even a consequence intentionally enacted, might well be something the child doesn’t like. So we begin to think, ‘am I abusing my child?’ But in my opinion, this is in the best interests of the child. The alternative of just allowing children to do behaviors that harm themselves, or others, is not giving them the gift of authority, which a young child needs in order to feel safe. Authority that takes their best interests into account, of course!
Yes, Jane, I completely agree. Saying yes is not always love. It goes to the protective vs. punitive use of force. If the pure intent is for their good and their needs, without anger, malice or desire to make them suffer, even if they don’t like it, then I think that’s an act taken out of love. It might not always be right, not always what was really needed, but it’s still coming from a place of love rather than something else that isn’t really.
Lots of complexity of course… and how to be get really clear on the difference?
I know , getting clear on the difference is important.
I try to do that by having the parents ask the question, why am I saying no? How will this be harming self, other or environment? If they can answer that question (with whatever values they hold) then they are probably doing as well as they could possibly be doing. That’s the whole Boot camp – Mayhem continuum thing. When to say yes and when to say no , from the Social Harmony Workshops
I guess even before this question , comes the problem which I call the Woody Allen problem. Where he was helping someone parallel park, ‘a little more’ ‘keep it coming’ ‘ a little more’ CRUNCH ‘yeah, hold it up there’
So what I’m saying is that when I read articles like what you wrote, which is what the attachment perspective usually writes, I see that as standing on the boot camp end of the continuum and saying ‘go that way towards the mayhem end’ ‘ a little more’ ‘ a little more’ and what I want the articles to do, is to mention the mayhem end so that parents don’t have to CRUNCH into that end before they realize that they’ve gone too far. Say both ends. Hold the dialectic. Resolve the paradox. That’s, to me, where the wisdom comes in and what is so needed by new parents. Young children naturally have a biological expectation of a caretaker taking the authority. It’s healthy to give them that. But sometimes parents worry that they are being ‘mean’ or ‘powering over’ when they say no to their children.
That said, the research literature about corporeal punishment (spanking) overwhelmingly shows many long term damaging effects. Thanks for bringing this to light Elana!