Where I come from, every kid knows what a switch is.
Memphis is smack in the middle of the Bible Belt where "Spare the rod and spoil the child," is a religious prescription and a cultural assumption. A rambunctious child is always disciplined with more than a good talking to. A "pop" on the behind — sometimes a belt, and sometimes a switch, a small tree branch stripped of leaves.
Lots of Americans were raised this way, especially Southerners, including East Texas-born Adrian Peterson. The pro-football player used a switch to discipline his 4-year-old son. He freely described what he called a "whooping" to authorities who later charged him with “reckless" or “negligent injury.”
The charges were filed after CBS Houston obtained, from an unnamed source, the doctor’s report which detailed lacerations, bruises on his lower back and buttocks, welts on his scrotum, and cuts on his hand. And in a police interview, the child claimed Peterson punched him in the face and stuffed the stripped branch leaves in his mouth, before pulling down his pants to hit him with the switch.
I can distinctly remember one of the times I got switched. I had gone to pick berries off our neighbor’s bush. My father warned my sister and me to stay out of Mrs. Williams' yard and keep our hands off those berries. But my 10-year-old self couldn’t resist the temptation. One day I happily trespassed and sauntered back home planning to slip in the back door. My father was waiting on our back steps. He asked me if I had been picking Mrs. Williams' berries. I said no, not realizing that the front of my white tee shirt was stained with the evidence. Now I was caught trespassing and fibbing — switch time. I sobbed while he swatted me about three times and talked to me about misbehaving. I didn’t do it again.
I don’t consider Daddy’s actions child abuse; in fact I don’t think spanking is child abuse. I’m not alone. A University of Texas study found 89 percent of black parents approve of spanking, 80 percent of Latino parents, 79 percent of white parents and 73 percent of Asian parents. Overwhelmingly, American parents spank.
But there is spanking and there is spanking. I didn’t see kids I knew get beaten to the point of welts and bruises, but no doubt it happened. I’m scared to think about it. But times change, and I think society’s view on corporal punishment has been influenced by public reporting of horrific incidents of child abuse. Which is why Adrian Peterson’s switching his four-year-old became national news.
Peterson’s lawyer spoke about his client as “a loving father," who "used his parental judgment to discipline his son." But as the Reverend Emmett Price bluntly told Boston Public Radio , “In 2014, we have to show him that is not normal behavior.”
While I don’t believe any parent has the right to hit a child the way Adrian Peterson hit his son, I remain convinced that a judicious spanking — not a beating — can be good discipline.
Not so my sister, who went against Southern custom and tradition when she had her twin son and daughter. Watching her explain "time out" to my clearly skeptical Dad was something to see. Nobody was more surprised than he when it worked.
