son of witless

Yes. Strong does not mean abusive. Strong means you are there in the home. You do not have to hit the kids. Sometimes it is merely restraining them and enforcing curfews . None of us had perfect fathers. I took the best from mine and from some very good uncles I was lucky to have and tried to raise my kids without the bad part. I see generational failures within families. Sons passing down crap from their fathers. Grandmothers raising their granddaughters because they did not raise their daughters well. Sometimes it is inherited mental illness. Bipolar and paranoia tends to run on the male sides of families and does not appear until late teens, early twenties. Even there strong parenting can at least keep them from harming others.

The sad part is bad fathering blows up the values of the kids. I know some some really angry Atheists whose fathers were somewhat religious, but abusive. Now it is all Christianity's fault and America's fault that at 60 years old their lives suck and their kids are chips off the old block. Needless to say these folks do not v**e Republican.

DaWg44

Sounds like farm philosophy. You respect the land, the animals, all people, yourself, & the equipment. You have to be responsible for your chores & your actions. You are not the center of attention. Your wants are way down the list of what is needed. You are an ambassador for your family name. You get no prizes for half a job done. If an adult says jump, you are in the air w/o asking how high. You help those less fortunate, not look the other way or make fun of them. When you eat lunch & someone has none, you share.

When you have earned enough to buy an old truck, you have a rifle rack in the rear window, you drive your truck to school, & leave it unlocked. You have a pocket knive on you at all times. You understand a fist fight is a fist fight, no knives or guns allowed.

You learn the hard way if it takes it that The Ten Commandments are a good guide to life. If you care about eating, you pray for rain. If all you have to eat is cornbread & milk, you give thanks for that. When your parents give food away to others in lean years, you ask no questions. You wear hand me down clothes but they are clean, the legs may be too short but your pants won’t be around your knees. If someone makes fun of you, you walk away. If they insult your mother or father, you beat hell out of them. If you see a bully abusing someone who cannot protect his/her self, it becomes your fight.

When the f**g passes by, you put your hand over your heart & admire those who have served having the right to salute. You don’t expect anything from the Government but a draft card, tax bill, & get both. You h**e the land bank & crop allotments because no farmer w/ half sense is going to plant more than he can sell or store. You plant five extra rows of peanuts so all the neighbors can have boiled peanuts.

You end up halfway around the world doubting the way you were raised for a minute or two everyday. You come home, if you are lucky, mostly intact, to kids calling you names & walk away.

You work hard, raise kids the way you were raised, lose a son, & see spoiled babies insulting The President, demanding their get their way when they are just being pawns & too dumb to know it. If they had an original thought, I would listen. If they wanted to protest driving while texting, I would be with them. First on the scene to a wreck with the young graduate, 2 miles from graduation, dead, & her phone beeping in reply to her last text hurts.

You find yourself 70 years old still saying yes mam, no sir, please, & thank you to young people who sometimes look at you like you have two heads. You have no tv. You actually go to the library, check out books, & return them on time. The old injuries you have from the time in your life when you thought you were bullet proof are daily reminders of the fragility of life.

If your are really blessed, you will get a hand written letter from the grandson who is growing up w/o a father who did not make it home.

debeda

bahmer

Wasn't it Dr. Benjamin Spock that said that we should not use corporal punishment on our children but use things like time out? In my opinion he set back parenting by 100 years because all of the loonie left followed his wacky advice and that is the reason that the world is as screwed up as it is today. I am with you a good swift whack on the backside speaks volumes to a child as opposed to I sure got out of that easy.

maureenthannon

bahmer. Funny you should mention Dr. Ben Spock, Did you know that he eventually got married, had kids and found out that his philosophy of discipling children changed quite a bit. Too bad that most of the parents that raised their kids under his paental expertise either didn't get the message, or it was too late to undo all the damage already done to their kids.Dr. James Dobson, author of,"Dare to Discipline" and several other books has parental advice that works MUCH BETTER than Dr Spock's let them do wh**ever they want, they'll figure out what's good and bad on their own some day, maybe. Look at people who hae well behaved children, and listen to their advice, they probably did some thing right.

bahmer

Amen and Amen my kids felt the wooden spoon from my wife and my hand as well. My father in law at the time fashioned a wooden paddle made from some kind of hard wood and he had one himself. We didn't have to use it much at all just thought of that paddle scared the kids to do right. But as I told my wife I would rather have the child get a whack on the buttocks in the parking lot for running out in front of a car than to have to take the kid home injured or worse yet visit them at the morgue.

acknowledgeurma

You give us some very cogent observations, however, I must disagree when you say, "None of us had perfect fathers." My father was perfect; he told me so many times; he would say, "I am the perfect example of what not to do."

acknowledgeurma

I think you may not have understood what Dr. Spock was saying. I found the following relevant:
http://www.notablebiographies.com/Sc-St/Spock-Benjamin.html

Wherein is found:
Spock's political opponents accused him of teaching "permissiveness" in Baby and Child Care. They claimed an entire generation of American youth had been raised and ruined. Without success Spock pointed out that similar student protests were happening in Third World countries, where his book was not sold, and were not happening in Western European countries, where it sold well.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc

\V Live Long and Prosper

son of witless

Mine had his moments. He was very smart, charming, and ambitious. He sometimes could string 5 good years together, but alloyed in that granite were some serious character flaws. He did not age well. He abandoned us a few times, then came back. My siblings and I survived, but we often wondered how much further in life we could have gone if we had come from a stable home. All of us did not do that to our kids and our kids are far surpassing us in accomplishments and I believe we had the same potential.

Then in Dad's defense, he had an alcoholic Father who often drank up his paycheck. Then in Grandad's defense, he had Father problems too, his first wife had mental problems and committed suicide and he was raising a large litter of kids during the Depression. So hopefully all of the crap stopped with my generation.

acknowledgeurma

I was extremely lucky. It is unfortunate that so many aren't. Your children are lucky.

son of witless

I will know that when I see how my grandchildren do. So far, so good.