As a child, when you were crying, did your parents ever threaten you with violence to make you stop?
Saying something along the lines of “I will give you a reason to cry!”.
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No. That sort of threat was usually reserved for inappropriate mirth.
Not at that young of age.
10 and up, yes, because I knew better and they expected better.
No, they never said such things. They weren’t brutes.
I was a pretty sensitive kid and I got upset easily. Not an easy thing for parents to deal with, but they never resorted to threats.
Never.
Plus, my parents never laid a hand on me in me as a form of discipline.
My dad laid hands on me when he was teaching me how to fight, but that was instructional.
“I’ll give you something to cry about.” I heard that sometimes, but I don’t think it was addressed to me. It doesn’t make any sense, anyway.
@Jeruba Normally it was said if I was pouting or whining for getting scolded, thus I’ll REALLY give you something to cry about.
Yes. Not my from mother, but from my father.
No. But mom would get angry if we cried. I know now it was because she felt guilty. Everything was always about her.
Yup. “Shut the fuck up you little shit or I’ll give you something to cry about” was one of mom’s favorites.
I remember my mom once telling me she would embarrass me in front of the whole store if I didn’t stop. Who knows what she would have done if I hadn’t stopped, because I know now that was an empty threat, but that is the only time I remember carrying on, and my mom sort of threatening me.
I don’t remember crying a lot, and I don’t remember my parents trying to shut down my crying when I did, except that one time I mentioned.
I think they ignored my crying if I was being ridiculous. Unfortunately, sometimes they ignored my crying when I was really upset, mostly my dad did that, but it didn’t happen often. It was more teenager stuff.
When I was a little girl they usually let me cry, and listened to me, and I wasn’t a very demanding child anyway.
In a loud bellow. You betcha.
Not my mom. She was all about appearances. She would dig her long nails into me and whisper crisply, “If we have to leave, you’ll be sorry.”
God. I am sorry for all the threatening and bullying that you guys went through. My parents were firm and strict, but they weren’t assholes.
God I’m lucky.
Yes, I got swats and spankings.
And Mom was kind of an asshole but always sorry later. Not the same as a male being an asshole, even if he was sorry later.
Dutch. I may regret asking, but why is there a gender difference (to you) in who can/can’t be sorry later?
I didn’t mean a gender difference in an apology. When men get enraged it is far more terrifying than a woman getting mad. If a male is verbally abusive on a regular basis, but always apologizes later….don’t bother apologizing.
^
“When men get enraged it is far more terrifying than a woman getting mad.”
Because we’re weak and harmless?
You don’t know me very well. ~
As children we were never allowed to show weakness even if injured.
At one point my overburdened mother told me to tell my sister ( we were only age 5 yrs) who had scraped her knees when she fell on the pavement ” tell her to stop crying or I will give her something to really cry about!”
We learned at a very early age to suppress our feelings and very rarely received if any encouragements or any affection at all. It didn’t matter male or female we were treated the same with indifference and were blamed for being born and causing our downfall financially!
Unfair but it happens.
Later in life I did a little research on my families origins etc and discovered that they had parents who were much more irresponsible and mean.
So studying patterns in families I realize that both of my parents had very poor role models and thus the pattern continued but at a much less degree than what they themselves experienced.
And the Grandparents, Great grandparents a lot worse as I went back in the search so it depended on there economic backgrounds whether stable or poor made a huge difference in child rearing practices.
I agree that when the male parent is screaming angry it is different. At least in my experience.
I was terrified my dad would physically hurt me when he was angry. It took me until I was in my late teens to realize he never had physically abused me in a rage. One time he did break in my locked bedroom door, so I guess some might see that as violence, but once in he just wanted to finish talking. He was wrong to do it, I’m not defending him, but just trying to be completely transparent.
I knew my dad had the strength to kill me in a minute, and he was just an average slightly overweight guy when I was a kid. Actually, shorter than average, so I was close to his height by my early teens. Still, if he had grabbed me and wanted to strangle me it wouldn’t take much. Even in retrospect I do believe he had the strength to do it, I wasn’t wrong. With my mom, I never had that fear and she screamed at us quite a bit.
The average man has much more physical strength than the average woman, that’s just a fact. Add in if you are a little kid, that just increases the physical power.
I was plenty afraid of many adults, when I was a child. Men, and women.
I only saw my dad really angry once. It was kind of scary…but I wasn’t exactly scared. I knew he’d never hurt me.
As time goes on I realize I had a very special father. It would have been nice if we could have been friends when I grew up, but he was a good father to me growing up.
@longgone Same, women can be just as mean. Some indian tribes gave you to the women if you deserved torture.
Source @KNOWITALL? I don’t believe anyone here said women are not capable of being sadistic and abusive. They are. But men are more terrifying in the threatening stages, and they’re far more likely to tip over into assaulting the little children than women are.
No, it’s not because we’re weak and harmless @Longgone. You know what I mean. My Mom screamed and ranted and screamed and raged and threw things and broke things. I was always pretty sure I could escape if I needed to, though.
When I was a senior in High School I woke up to my Mom standing in the doorway of my bedroom just SCREAMING bloody murder at me at the top of her lungs. She had one of those twine wrapped wine bottles that were the rage in the 70s and which was normally on the table by my bed. She had it by the neck, and had it cocked back ready to throw.
Well, I was blind without my glasses. Something like, 1,500 / 20. Very super bad. I could barely make out what the hell was happening, but I was terrified I couldn’t duck if she hurled it. I couldn’t SEE what she was doing / holding, until later, when I put my glasses on. I just knew it was very bad.
She ended up storming out of the house and as she backed out of the garage in a rage she dented the shit out of the garage door rail. We couldn’t close the door past that point for a few weeks until it was fixed.
I got blamed for it. I was the one who made her mad.
That link just sends me back to this question.
Well, click on it!
Wait. Let me try to copy and paste. (And it’s a PDF not a Word doc.)
Nope. It doesn’t go any where. Nothing happens
I was able to open it with my phone. I sent it to my email to read when I get home.
@Dutchess_lll Good. It’s an interesting article about grooming children to violence while they’re young, etc…
Well, it didn’t send it. Is there any way you can copy and paste the text here?
I did glean from the first page that it had something to do with warfare.
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Thanks. It was an interesting but also ambiguous article. Some times they suggested the acts that were reported were exaggerated.
Now women are capable of sado-masochistic behavior too. In Sacajawea she alludes to a a Native women of another tribe who sexually molests her children.
So yes. Women can be violent too. Of course they can. But it’s just not the same as when a man flies into a rage and starts smashing things and up ending tables and stuff.
Anyway, here are some excerpts I pulled from the article:
”...the purposes behind it have so far eluded historical explanation and the subject falls into no current categories of analysis: it is perceived as neither a valid part of native warfare, nor as part of the standard package of “typical” or “appropriate” female behaviours” <<<From a westernized POV.
”This paper begins by looking at a rare late seventeenth-century account of white female violence in colonial America” (Bolding mine)
“This discussion is not intended to suggest that ritual torture happened every time captives were brought back to a village, and neither is it stating that torture was practised by every tribe and by women only”
”explanations stalled at“madness”, “fury” or “savagery”, western explanations for female behaviour that stepped outside of conventional and approved boundaries.”
”Another historian of native peoples has also challenged the significance of ritual torture by native women, suggesting it was exaggerated by observers who had never witnessed women’s participation in torture andexecution in Europe.”
“Accounts of these horrors appear in Early American narratives yet find no definitive home among histories of women or warfare.”
Something to consider was the the Early Western American (white) POV, the Indians were “savages.” Maybe they just saw what they were expecting to see.
Thanks for taking the time to post it for me.
@Dutchess_III Article aside, I fear women more than men, and for good reason in my experience. No one who knows my background would blame me, I’m sure. It’s really interesting in a way, because my threshold of tolerance with men is still much higher than with females, even decades later.
Well, my Mom was verbally violent. She would also throw things and scream. I only saw my dad truly angry one time and he started to break down my sister’s door. He didn’t yell.
It’s my other experience with other men that have shaped my opinions. I’m not as afraid of women. Maybe it’s because I’m above average in height and I used to be very strong.
@Dutchess_III Interesting how our experiences affect our thought process.
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