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Dear Young Parents:
Because of my own experiences, I would encourage to try hard to avoid spanking your children.
My own experiences with spanking I believe are responsible for a sexual fetish that I wish I did not have. It is important for everyone to realize that young children develop sexuality at an earlier age than we probably realize. The butt is very close to genitals. Force or pressure directed to one area is generally felt in the other. Without meaning to do so, I believe many well-meaning parents accidentally cause or promote such a fetish.
My parents did nothing that even today I believe would be classified as abuse. They were well-meaning and the discipline I got was probably less than they received as children. However, between ages 4 and 12, I was spanked maybe one to two dozen times. It was not often and my parents preferred other methods of discipline. They did use spanking though when they felt behavior called for it.
Perhaps, the ritual involved in my punishment accounted for what happened. I don't know. I will say that when I was spanked for some wrongdoing it was usually done in a specific way. I would be called to the living room and my father and mother would talk to me and my two siblings (brother and sister) about what I had done wrong. My father would than explain the consequences which would include getting a spanking. My pants were usually pulled down. Although, I was never spanked on my bare butt. Instead, I was spanked in my underwear. My father would make me bend over his knee and would spank me until I cried. Sometimes it was with his hand. I remember a couple of spankings with a very thin paddle. I don't think even today anyone looking at the paddle would have called what he did abuse. However, the whole experience was very shaming. To this day, I remember my mother sitting there with a look of satisfaction on her face while I got spanked in my jockey shorts. Also, having my brother and sister there to watch this was hugely embarrassing for me.
Please don't do this to your children. Find other ways to discipline them.
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Just one little comment: I'm German and I'm reading through this entire "spanking" subject with a kind of "shock" because I just didn't know that in a modern country like USA it's still such an issue.
ReplyDeleteI was born in 1960 and while I was a child, it was rather "normal" that children were corporally punished for "misbehaviour". I remember that my mother spanked me three or four times during my childhood. Even later my mother said it wouldn't have hurt me too much, but I don't agree with her about that. A lot of the troubles she went through with me could have been spared if I wouldn't have been afraid of punishment.
To make the long story short: In my country spanking the children isn't a real subject anymore because since a few years we have a law against it and in my generation (and the one which comes after me) you'll hardly find any parents anymore who believe in spanking as in something "good". Nevertheless our crime rate isn't higher as the American and as far as I know we have even less teenager pregnancies. Actually I think that proves that rearing children without spanking works well - and should be something to make the parents who still believe in spanking consider!
I feel like it's worth noting that spanking fetishes are not *always* related to being spanked as a child. While I do think there is often a connection, it seems far more common to develop a spanking fetish when you were not spanked as a child. I think it's really, really important not to perpetuate the stereotype that BDSM related activities are the result of abuse or are themselves abusive.
ReplyDeleteMore importantly, though, is that your sexual desires- no matter they are- are not something to be ashamed of. And therapy is the best way to sort out the influence your past traumas have on your present sexuality, and can help you find ways to satisfy the needs of your inner kinkster free from the guilt and shame a warped childhood can embed on your sexuality.