Why we donât like it when children hit us back
To all the children who have ever been told to ârespectâ someone that hated them.
Even those of us that are disturbed by the thought of how widespread corporal punishment still is in all ranks of society are uncomfortable at the idea of a child defending themself using violence against their oppressors and abusers. A child who hits back proves that the adults âwere right all along,â that their violence was justified. Even as they would cheer an adult victim for defending themself fiercely.
Even those âchild rights advocatesâ imagine the right child victim as one who takes it without ever stopping to love âitsâ owners. Tear-stained and afraid, the child is too innocent to be hit in a guilt-free manner. No one likes to imagine the Brat as Victimâthe child who does, according to adultist logic, deserve being hit, because they follow their desires, because they walk the world with their head high, because they talk back, because they are loud, because they are unapologetically here, and resistant to being cast in the role of guest of a world that is just not made for them.
If we are against corporal punishment, the brat is our gotcha, the proof that it is actually not that much of an injustice. The brat unsettles us, so much that the âbad seedâ is a stock character in horror, a genre that is much permeated by the adult gaze (defined as âthe way children are viewed, represented and portrayed by adults; and finally societyâs conception of children and the way this is perpetuated within institutions, and inherent in all interactions with childrenâ), where the adult fear for the subversion of the structures that keep children under control is very much represented.
It might be very well true that the Brat has something unnatural and sinister about them in this world, as they are at constant war with everything that has ever been created, since everything that has been created has been built with the purpose of subjugating them. This is why it feels unnatural to watch a child hitting back instead of cowering. We feel like itâs not right. We feel like history is staring back at us, and all the horror we felt at any rebel and wayward child who has ever lived, we are feeling right now for that reject of the construct of âchildhood innocence.â The child who hits back is at such clash with our construction of childhood because we defined violence in all of its forms as the province of the adult, especially the adult in authority.
The adult has an explicit sanction by the state to do violence to the child, while the child has both a social and legal prohibition to even think of defending themself with their fists. Legislation such as âparent-child tort immunityâ makes this clear. The adultâs designed place is as the one who hits, and has a right and even an encouragement to do so, the one who acts, as the person. The childâs designed place is as the one who gets hit, and has an obligation to accept that, as the one who suffers acts, as the object. When a child forcibly breaks out of their place, they are reversing the supposed ânatural orderâ in a radical way.
This is why, for the youth liberationist, there should be nothing more beautiful to witness that the child who snaps. We have an unique horror for parricide, and a terrible indifference at the 450 children murdered every year by their parents in just the USA, without even mentioning all the indirect suicides caused by parental abuse. As a Psychology Today article about so-called âparricideâ puts it:
Unlike adults who kill their parents, teenagers become parricide offenders when conditions in the home are intolerable but their alternatives are limited. Unlike adults, kids cannot simply leave. The law has made it a crime for young people to run away. Juveniles who commit parricide usually do consider running away, but many do not know any place where they can seek refuge. Those who do run are generally picked up and returned home, or go back on their own: Surviving on the streets is hardly a realistic alternative for youths with meager financial resources, limited education, and few skills.
By far, the severely abused child is the most frequently encountered type of offender. According to Paul Mones, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in defending adolescent parricide offenders, more than 90 percent have been abused by their parents. In-depth portraits of such youths have frequently shown that they killed because they could no longer tolerate conditions at home. These children were psychologically abused by one or both parents and often suffered physical, sexual, and verbal abuse as wellâand witnessed it given to others in the household. They did not typically have histories of severe mental illness or of serious and extensive delinquent behavior. They were not criminally sophisticated. For them, the killings represented an act of desperationâthe only way out of a family situation they could no longer endure.
Despite these being the most frequent conditions of âparricide,â it still brings unique disgust to think about it for most people. The sympathy extended to murdering parents is never extended even to the most desperate child, who chose to kill to not be killed. They chose to stop enduring silently, and that was their greatest crime; that is the crime of the child who hits back. Hell, children arenât even supposed to talk back. They are not supposed to be anything but grateful for the miserable pieces of space that adults carve out in a world hostile to children for them to live following adult rules. It isnât rare for children to notice the adult monopoly on violence and force when they interact with figures like teachers, and the way they use words like ârespect.â In fact, this social dynamic has been noticed quite often:
Sometimes people use ârespectâ to mean âtreating someone like a personâ and sometimes they use ârespectâ to mean âtreating someone like an authorityâ and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say âif you wonât respect me I wonât respect youâ and they mean âif you wonât treat me like an authority I wonât treat you like a personâ and they think theyâre being fair but they arenât, and itâs not okay.
(https://soycrates.tumblr.com/post/115633137923/stimmyabby-sometimes-people-use-respect-to-mean)
But it has received almost no condemnation in the public eye. No voices have raised to contrast the adult monopoly on violence towards child bodies and child minds. No voices have raised to praise the child who hits back. Because they do deserve praise. Because the child who sets their foot down and says this belongs to me, even when itâs something like their own body that they are claiming, is committing one of the most serious crimes against adult society, who wants them dispossessed.
