Since when is it mandatory to have been the oppressor before speaking out about the oppression I experienced? Is the pain in my heart invalid just because I have never been on the other end of it? Am I not allowed to have experienced something as hurtful until I have first inflicted it on someone else? Not many people would say this, if I phrase it that way. But that is exactly what they are saying when they tell me I cannot speak out about childhood since I have never been a parent.
This is actually a logical fallacy called argumentus ad hominem. Quite simply, argumentus ad hominem means arguing against the person rather than against the ideas or concepts. It is not acceptable in logical discourse. It is generally taken to mean that one has been unable to refute the argument, and so resorts to casting aspersions on the arguer.
And then there are the ones who tell me I must have been abused. They simply cannot wrap their minds around the concept that "normal," "loving" discipline just might be experienced as hurtful by some children. So I speak of the deep wounds in my soul, and they respond by by saying they "have to believe" I was abused. Well, I have news for them: their need to believe it does not make it true. I am well aware that people "have to believe" I was abused -- which is why I need to make such a point of the fact that I was not.
At first, I did not take them seriously; I felt that they were blinded by the inherent narcissism of fallen human nature. But the response was so uniform and universal -- longtime devout Christians and people of the world giving essentially the same answer -- I am willing to entertain the possibility that raising children in the context of our present society might, in fact, require a parent to do these things. If so, I must therefore never become a parent, for I will not have such things on my conscience. That something despicable may be necessary does not render it any less despicable.
I hear some readers asking for specifics. Very well; one example should suffice. As all who read his writings know, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, is in favor of punishing children by spanking, even though he claims to oppose child abuse. But he also likes to emphasize that, even in discipline, "the child's feelings must be respected." So, some years ago, I decided to risk baring my soul a little; I wrote a letter to Focus on the Family describing my feelings as a child when I was spanked. (Notice I said spanked, not beaten -- I know the difference.) Any spanking, however light, would leave me feeling as though I might as well go throw myself in the trash. Focus on the Family staff sent back a reply -- but it did not even address the feelings I had shared. Ever since, Dobson's platitudes about respecting the child's feelings have had a decidedly hollow ring. Now, some might defend him by saying I must have been an unusually sensitive child. Even if that is true, his statement contained no qualifiers excluding even the very sensitive; he phrased it so as to include ALL children. (If Focus remembers that letter, and can find it in their files, then they can try replying again; but on my end, I seek no further contact with them.)
The saddest part is that there were no doubt other people who used to remember their own childhoods as I still remember mine; but the pressures brought to bear on parents forced them to forget. How else is it possible that I actually hear some people say that the child has misbehaved because "he just wants to be naughty"? Remember your own childhoods, folks! No matter what naughty thing you might have done, I doubt if "being naughty" per se was your reason; no doubt you had a reason that made sense to you at the time, even if it did not to the grownups.
Equally sad is that it is socially acceptable to equate children's sadness with manipulation. By that I mean: if a child is crying because he has been denied something he wanted, the grownups tend to assume he is having a trantrum in an attempt to "get his way." Maybe he is just sad that he can't have his way; maybe he knows crying will not get him what he wants, but he feels so sad, the tears come anyway. And on this one, the grownups have no excuse, because they do not even have to remember their own childhoods -- just look at their emotions right now. When you are crying over something you cannot change, are you doing so in order to change it? Children are human. They have human reactions. But they do not have the perspective of adults to see what adults think is unimportant.
If being a "good" parent requires me to forget what it is really like to be a child, then may I never be one!