it takes no one to raise a child

One thing that continues to bother me into adulthood is societal attitudes towards children and youth. In what is considered a highly developed country, wherein any nutbar can express any opinion he likes without fear of reprimand- our attitudes towards children and our treatment of them is still rooted in a dark time.

What's so strange about our disciplinarian attitude towards children is that with its other hand, society holds children up as innocent, fresh, and rightfully presented with expanding opportunity. Yet, when a child says something they "shouldn't", when a child does something "wrong", spanking them, slapping them, or otherwise abusing them is an acceptable course of action.

In fact, parents and authority figures that don't torture children for minor breaches of civility our frowned upon as lazy, ignorant or childish themselves. I don't use words like "torture" and "abuse" lightly. When one individual outweighs another by more than 100 lbs, is smarter and wiser than them by decades, and their action is to exert physical dominance on the smaller, weaker person, that is abuse and nothing less.

Even the idea that children need discipline is a falsehood. Children surely need to be taught what is acceptable behavior. And that is non-coercive, non-abusive, calm and calculated sociability. What's so strange is that adults assume that children will not learn how to behave in society without their discipline. Surely, if a child is not hit, if a child is not bound to their room("grounded"), they'll turn into a raging sociopath, willing to take a literal shit on someone instead of talking to them?

It's truly awful. When psychiatrists evaluate the antisocial, they never owe their disregard for human rights to a free childhood. Either the individual was continually abused, or their childhood was rather normal. But the conclusion reached is never "I did something unnaceptable, I wasn't spanked, so I started carefully harming others".

So what are the results of an undisciplined child? Well, the person typing came from a home where I was very rarely spanked until I was 9. The spanking not-so-mysteriously stopped when my dad was taken off of prescribed steroids. From that age on, I could come and go as I pleased. I never had to tell my parents what I was doing. My parents never even went upstairs, where me and my brother lived, to tell us to clean our rooms to their liking or have our property searched.

And here I am today, after an essentially undisciplined childhood, never having done wrong to another person, never having tricked or hurt to get my way. With the ability to think freely, knowing that any decision I make will not cause unrest in my family. Consistently creating pieces of "art" or "entertainment" in my free time that both educate the curious and criticize the wicked in our society. Possessing a grandiose view of myself that at the very least will cause me to enjoy every moment of my life and at the most will provide sustenance for myself and those around me.

Leave the kids alone. If they turn out to be bad apples, they were always going to be. Most will be good, because most people are decent. Don't turn good people into bitter, traumatized and frightened individuals by childhood conditioning, or "correcting". Save that for lab rats and political leaders.