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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]That’s sad. In the second shift, there was an interview with a dad who saw corporal punishment as his role as a parent. Like that was the only thing. He was responsible for discipline. His wife didn’t leave them alone with him even to get her hair done. The interviews were from the late 80s and early 90s. I would argue men are doing better as parents, but again, it’s stalled.[/quote]

1980s was when the percentage of SAHMs was rapidly declining, but still generally considered the norm. I wouldn't be surprised if those dads interviewed were the breadwinner and their wives were SAHMs, and thus "discipline" was indeed the only thing he was expected to do as a parent.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s when corporal punishment was the norm. My parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even schoolteachers routinely hit me. They only stopped when I got big enough that if they it me I laughed at them. If you'd asked me in the 1980s (when I did not yet have kids) I would have said "yes it's fine to hit kids if they misbehave". That was the environment I grew up in. When I eventually had my own kids, my attitude completely changed. I never hit them, and never felt I needed to. I regard corporal punishment as the product of weakness, failure, and laziness in the adult who hits the kid - if you hit your kids, you suck as a parent.[/quote]

I do t hot my kids either, but you realize that this is one more unrealistic expectation for parents and due to stalled revolution, moms. That’s why you see so many threads on here ripping each other apart over misbehavior. There’s a lot of advice about not hitting but a lot less about what to do when kids act up. [/quote]

I am the PP who said that I would like to leave my DH alone with the kids for a bit to force him to learn how to do this stuff and stop relying on me to pick up the slack, but that I genuinely worry that when things inevitably go to pot, he would resort to hitting the kids before he figured it out.

I grew up in the 80s and my parents hit us all the time. I agree with the PP who said that hitting kids is a sign of failure -- you've run out of ideas and you're frustrated/angry, so you hit your kids. That's absolutely what my parents did. It is one of several things that destroyed our relationship. And in the 80s, their behavior was borderline. They grew up in families where hitting was encouraged, but I certainly had peers in school whose parents would never hit them and, rightly, considered it child abuse. But it was a hotly debated issue at the time, and there were still lots of people willing to defend it back them, far more than now.

In theory, my DH agrees with me that we should never hit our kids. But he grew up in a house like mine. And I watch him with the kids and he just struggles so much with developing the skills he needs so that he never resorts to physical violence. He creates conflict with the kids because of his own impatience, and he struggles so much to remember how young and inexperienced they are. Like he will get frustrated by the indecision of our 3 year old, express his frustration, and when she cries or talks back (depends on her mood), he'll get mad and more frustrated, and it will escalate. I wind up having to step in all the time even though I don't want to because he is still just struggling to understand how to diffuse the situation. I've talked to him about a ton. I've given him parenting books to read (he will say he read them but I don't think he does). But it's still a problem. He can be GREAT with the kids, for the record. And I think when he is great with them, he counterbalances some of the aspects of parenting that I struggle with and I get a glimpse of the great team we could make. But then he'll be tired or busy and he just gets impatient and winds up engaging in these escalating fights with our very young kids. I can almost see this thing switch in his brain when it happens where I can see him going to the place my parents used to go to, where they'd get really militant and authoritarian and anything other than perfect compliance would enrage them.

I get it because I grew up in a similar house and sometimes I feel that switch in myself, but I trained myself a long time ago (probably before I even had kids) to stop and not let the switch flip. To take a breath, remind myself of my real goal (teaching, guiding, providing a safe and calm environment) and I will try another tack. Or even just say "Ugh, I need a break. We'll discuss this in a minute." Or whatever. I want my DH to get to this point. I'm trying. But until then, there is always a little bit of fear and I feel I have to protect my kids from experiencing what I experienced growing up. And I'm protecting my DH, too, from making a mistake that it will be impossible to come back from.

We have no choice but to keep working on it. I want him to do better. And I'm pretty much the only person who can help get him there. It's not a great role to have pushed on you but here we are.[/quote]

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