Hello Americans,
I’m an 18-year-old Brazilian woman, and I’ve noticed that in the U.S., violence against children and teenagers seems to be taken more seriously.
From videos online, I’ve seen people take this seriously. In Brazil, it’s often not like that. Some parents hit their children, sometimes even to hurt their partner after a separation.
Children and teenagers are often physically punished, and parents are usually seen as right, even in situations like this.
If it’s different in the U.S., I really admire that.
33 comments
If by “seriously” you meant throwing heavy amounts of thoughts and prayers towards it, sure.
If you mean creating sensible laws to prevent violence against children, not so much.
Yes, child abuse is continually more and more frowned upon as time goes on. Spanking is archaic, even.
> sometimes even to hurt their partner after a separation
That’s genuinely sadistic, evil behavior
where i live, exceptionally so. any amount of physical violence would trigger a call to child protective services if not the police. less so in some other communities
Yeah, physical punishment is heavily frowned upon. Leaving a visible mark on a child is considered abuse and can result in the parent losing custody.
Child abuse? Yes. Mass murder of children in school? That violence gets a pass.
Abusing your child after separating from a partner as a punishment is genuinely sick, like next level.
Yes they do. They just don’t take school violence seriously.
Our grandparent’s generation used physical punishment, but it is not considered acceptable by anyone here any longer.
Yes. Hurting children is bad.
Yes, it still happens here, but we culturally are mostly past the idea that you are allowed to physically harm someone just because they are related to you and you are stronger. That is very frowned on, and in many places illegal.
Tide is turning against corporal punishment, though a lot of people will still defend it unfortunately.
In my social circles it is not appropriate to be physically violent with children. My parents never used physical contact to control or punish us. I know my grandparents spanked my mom’s generation, but by the time there were grandkids they never practiced that.
I think you’d find the answer varies widely, but I would say from a perspective on the liberal side most people do not think physical consequences are appropriate or useful.
I wouldn’t discipline my own child with spanking or hitting.
It still happens, sadly. It just is a matter if there’s a witness or a partner/child who reports it. Sometimes the system that children go into isn’t stable too, it’s really a hit or miss if it’s better for the child (sometimes they do go into a good temporary home, but sometimes the temporary foster home is there only to get $$$ and not doing it because they have a heart to keep the child’s life stable and improved).
The questions here are so strange…
Yeah except school shootings
Violence, I think perhaps but not SA in any capacity. There’s not much recourse these days. Predators get a slap on the wrist. I could post 100s of examples but the one that comes to mind at this moment is a Texas man along with 7 other men, brutally hurt 2 young toddlers and filmed 4 videos of it. They only bothered to arrest one of the 7 men.
https://abc13.com/post/arthur-fernandez-charged-toddlers-sexually-abused-at-the-galleria-mall-kiosk-employee-in-federal-custody/14302727/
I’m not sure if a parent is even allowed to spank their kids on the butt without CPS being called.
I wholeheartedly disagree about Americans taking violence against children seriously. We have so many school shootings every year and nothing changes legislatively on a federal level. Also the Epstein files are just another example of how much Americans don’t care about protecting children.
My 13 year old son is 6’2” and strong as an ox. I am also 6’3” and 200#. If I tried to physically abuse my son he would likely beat the crap out of me.
Corporal punishment is a thing in america
In my experience, the more “Christian conservative” a family is, the more likely they are to condone/endorse physically abusing children as punishment.
It’s not a perfect 1:1 indicator, but it’s a really useful rule of thumb in my part of the US. I can’t speak to other regions though.
I mean, if I was in public and I saw someone hitting a child, I don’t care if it’s their kid or not, I’m stepping in.
You don’t want to be a man in jail for beating a kid or a woman, the other prisoners will beat you and if your lucky that’s all that will happen to you
The United States is very child-centered and pet-centered. It is not the culture in the US to randomly hit or beat children. That is considered different than a mother calmly spanking a child for doing something legitimately wrong such as lying or stealing, which is ok to most people here.
Americans get very angry if they find out about a neighbor or acquaintance hurting a child. They will often report this to authorities who will send a social worker to do an investigation. And if the claim was found to be true, the authorities will forcefully remove that child from the home, and place them with a different family instead, who is called a foster family.
The partner hurting a kid to get at the ex is fucked up.
Spanking/corporal punishment is seen as abuse in Australia for parents of this generation.
Beating your children is not okay I’ll be clear on that.
But Smacking your kids if it’s necessary for them is without doubt perfectly appropriate.
Depends on the color of the kid, and the color of the person doing the violence.
A white guy can shoot a black kid in the stomach, let the kid lay there and bleed out, stop anyone from giving the kid aid, and not even get a slap on the wrist for it.
Child abuse is frowned upon but not illegal. Severe child abuse is illegal. But no, unfortunately it’s not taken seriously by authorities and sometimes leads to death in severe cases.
Source: Worked in child welfare for six years.
Child abuse as a means of punishment continues to be more and more out of the norm as the boomers die. They are the ones who predominantly still normalize it because that’s what was normal and even considered the correct thing to do for a very, very long time. Gen X seems to be one of the first generations at large to have understood that their abuse that they received wasn’t normal, and it’s been fading out more and more from social norms.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t still prevalent, it’s just not socially acceptable. But there’s an incredible lack of a meaningful and effective system to address child abuse and get children out of abusive situations, and that’s something that desperately needs to change.
Explained?
U.s parents dont like hitting their kids but they dont mind kids getting hit and hazed by other kids at school
Machismo is a hell of a drug.
I don’t even spank my cats when they misbehave. Their peanut-sized brains aren’t able to connect the punishment to the crime; they just learn to fear you.
This also applies to humans younger than ~35.
If we know a child is being harmed, we’re going to turn the adult in. We, as a society, aren’t going to accept it.
True violence against Children and Teenagers is very serious.