Fair fight

I had an argument with a friend and it got pretty heated. We were out of sorts and we both really wanted to be heard, although ironically neither of us wanted to listen. This contributed to a high level of anger on both ends. Once we were calm we were able to come to a common resolution of understanding. Why am I telling you about my girl drama on a parenting post? Bear with me, as I tie it all together.

For the most part my friend and I have a balanced and harmonious relationship. We truly complement each other. Would our argument have looked different if there was an imbalance of power in our relationship? Would the person in the position of power bully the other? Maybe. Quite often people abuse their power in order to get what they want at the expense of what the other person wants.

Creating a bully

Bullies are hated by society and loved at the same time. The same society that breeds, feeds and empowers bullies is the same society that villainizes them. If my friend and I had a power differential between us, it is quite possible one of us would have bullied the other into some sort of submission.

Bullying occurs when a person in a position of power uses force, intimidation, humiliation or other forms of violence to dominate and control another person.Bullying is about subjugating someone 'lesser' than you.

When you look further at a person that uses these tactics, you soon realize that they only bully certain people or only bully in certain circumstances. The bottom line is the person has to be (or feel) in a position of power in order to bully someone else. They bully others because they can!

Someone your own size

Let's circle back to my heated argument with my best friend. In all honesty, I was on 10 emotionally. My anger was seething. I wanted her to shut up and back down. I wanted her to listen to me. I wanted her to agree with my perspective and forget about her own. I felt that she was totally out of line.

Why didn't I just punch her in the lip so she would back down and I could assert my dominance in this situation? The simple answer to that question is that I didn't want to get hit back. Remember my friend and I have equal footing in this relationship. If I hit her than we would have had a fight, because she has the right to hit me back.

Now what about a child? Think about it. In most cases, due to the hierarchical relationship, a child that is hit by their parent will not retaliate. In this scenario the parent is in the dominant position and is safe from any physical rebuttal. In this very moment that parent is a bully.

Winner takes all

This behavior of bullying those that are less powerful than yourself is steeped in western culture. Let's face it, western society is based on hierarchical positioning, divisiveness and fear. It's a culture formed by means of violent conquest. You may have heard the saying "might makes right", "survival of the fittest", "winner takes all", "race to the top" and countless others. People are constantly trying to get on top. Why? Because no one wants to be at the bottom.

What is wrong with being on the 'bottom'? Based on societal norms, EVERYTHING! Being at the bottom puts a person at risk of being subjugated by others. It would mean that they would have to yield to the will of others and have less control over their own desires. In a nutshell, those at the bottom relinquish self-determination.

Seems like being on the bottom is the pits! But does it really have to be this way? Let's explore what being on the bottom should mean. Using this hierarchical model as our framework, we can agree that in a parent child relationship, the parent is on top and the child is on the bottom.

Does being on the bottom mean that the child should be subjugated to the will of the one on top? Of course not. Being in a position of power does not automatically create bullying behavior. However, running an unconscious program in your mind that people at the bottom are inferior can in fact create and is what feeds a bully mentality. This faulty programming is inherited from western ideology that has perverted a multitude of social constructs.

People vs. Property

What if we had a paradigm shift in the manner that this power differential between parent and child is viewed? What if we reverted back to looking at parent and child relationships in a historical way, prior to colonization and puritan thinking? In that case being on the bottom would be synonymous with being a learner, being guided, supported and led lovingly.

Ultimately, parents are a solid base of support and security that children can use to confidently experience the expansive period of discovery, exploration and creation that is at the core of childhood. Instead of viewing these relationships as master/slave and oppressor/ subject, we can view them as teacher/learners and guides/creators. When we view our relationship with our children through this lens we can see that parents are divine teachers and guides and children are divine creators and learners.

Does this refreshing vocabulary remix mean that power differences does not exist between parents and children in contemporary society? That couldn't be further from the truth. Children rely on their parents for basic needs to survive. So yes, parents are typically in a dominant position of power in these relationships. However, no one is better than the other. The teacher gets as much from the learner as the learner gets from the teacher. My mentors are not better than me. I am not better than my students. I simply have permission to guide and teach my students and they have allowed themselves to be guided.

In a parent/child relationship children rely on their parents for food, shelter, love, security, and guidance. This is a relationship based on a divine contract! You are granted permission to guide, teach, protect, and love children. To clarify, this divine contract does not indicate ownership.

Violent Past

Children are born into this world as whole beings and are not property. This idea that children are property stems from perverted ideology of European colonizers and settlers that routinely used beatings, torture and even execution of children that were disobedient. The puritan's believed that children were innately evil and should be brought to salvation through violent means.

Conversely, In precolonial times of Western Africa, children were regarded as gods reincarnated from the afterlife (Patton, 2017). They were regarded as sacred and were guided by the elders to harness the fullness of their potential as they transitioned into the stage of maturity.

Similarly, Native Americans regarded children as sacred gifts from the Creator. The purpose of their parenting was to foster independence in them so that the children would follow their own inclinations. Native Americans believed that using force, fear, and physical pain would render children submissive and stunt them in their growth (Patton, 2017).

What a far cry from the brutality that many European children endured during those times. These historical events shape how we view children and in order to create a shift in thinking the current unconscious programming needs to be exposed.

Paradigm shift

Historical practices of Europeans has influenced contemporary parenting styles. Parents of today seem to have an implicit belief that their children are their property, therefore they would be justified in beating them to get them to 'act right' . Despite the well documented harmful effects of physical punishment towards children, 70-80 percent of parents in the United States admit to using physical punishment on their children. (Fivethirtyeight, 2014 and Payton, 2017).

It's not surprising that phrases such as 'I brought you into this world and I'll take you out' is common. I highly doubt that those that use that phrase really mean that. Because if they did they would not object to being murdered by their parents for displeasing them. This belief is only embraced when they are the ones in the power position. That way, they are the ones doing subjugating and suppressing and not the other way around. I am sorry to be so blunt but it is as simple as that. You do not own your children. It high time that we turn this way of thinking on its head.

Conscious choice

It is evident that children rely on their parents for basic survival needs which puts parents in the power position. The question is what will parents do with that power? Will we abuse that power to force our will onto another free being? Or will it be used to guide a divine soul into self-actualization and fullness?

Will we allow unconscious programming to bring about an oppressive style of parenting? Or will we make a conscious choice to parent as a divine guide? The child does not really get to choose in this matter. We have the ultimate choice. Let's choose wisely.

References

Fivethirtyeight (2014). Retrieved from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-opinions-on-spanking-vary-by-party-race-region-and-religion/.

Patton, S (2017). Spare the Kids: Why whupping children won’t save black America. Boston,MA: Beacon Press.

Reiner, J. (n.d.) Native American and Colonial Children, Influence of John Locke, Slavery and Revolution. Retrived from http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Co-Fa/Discipline.html.

Zornado, J. L. (2001). Inventing the Child. Culture, ideology and the story of childhood. New York: Garland Pub.

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