There were four of us. The oldest and the youngest got beat pretty regularly. I once needed to take a baseball bat away from my mother before she started beating my younger sister.
The middle two, my brother and myself, got hit, but not as frequently.
The oldest and youngest struggled greatly in life: failed marriages (the oldest was divorced three times); failed out of college; failure to establish long-term career or job stability; bankruptcies; loss of religious faith; homelessness; mental illness; and, in the case of my older brother, early death. Their children range from not-quite-successful to parasitic.
Conversely, my brother and I, the lightly-beaten ones, both finished college, are married to our first brides, moderately successful careers, home ownership, successful children, with the usual bumps, bruises, setbacks, and speed bumps of life along the way.
My wife and I never hit our children at all. Just didn’t find the need. They were strictly disciplined. Our friends would always say how mean a dad I was. We had no cable, no video games, no XBox, no Nintendo, no Gameboy. They got to watch 30 minutes of TV per day when they were young. We homeschooled, and pretty vigorously. Neighbors questioned whether we were child abusers.
But all the friends and neighbors would also comment about how well-behaved my sons were, how smart, how respectful, how charming.
Now, they’re both at college and prospering. I can’t say they’d have turned out better if I’d hit them when they were young.
A few years ago, my wife (nearing retirement) was at her mom’s. Her mom is 80 or so, and was playing around with a willow branch that had come off their tree, just swishing it around. She was playing and said my wife had missed a few swats she should have had and swung it at her and just happened to hit her with it. We’re talking an 80 year old woman with bad eyes. My wife says it wasn’t a hard swing and wasn’t intentional. It raised a welt and that welt broke open and showed red.
Now, is that a felony? Of course not, you’d say. And you’d be right.
But the ability of a switch to raise a welt is what makes me think Peterson didn’t have any abusive intent in mind. He was mirroring what he had learned as a child. You punish with a switch.
These guys are freakish strong and don’t know how different they are.
Is it a felony? Prison??? Nope, it’s some kind of intervention level offense (a misdemeanor?) that should get child services involved and should get Peterson into required parenting and/or anger classes.