Spanking with a belt=felony

paying3tuitions
Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:51:55 +0000

Catching up on this thread, and re-reading the Opening Post, I am thinking now about my FIL who broke the pattern of belt-whipping in time for raising his own 5 sons. I’m curious if anyone has stories about people who were belt-beaten, but did not repeat the practice themselves as parents.

And yes, I do mean belt-beaten. FIL’s powerfully strong Dad, a blacksmith who could halve a cast-iron stove with one well-placed skedgehammer blow, also belt-whipped the boys among his l0 children, Same man also face-punched his 4 ft. l0 inch wife (who gave him 13 kids, l0 lived). Wife divorced him after all l0 kids were grown and she in her 70’s. Times were different. He died a lonely man, with all the descendants paying him a dutiful annual visit, but hanging out always at the elderly matriarch’s apartment instead.

So there’s my FIL, growing up the youngest boy of the l0 kids in a factory town in the l930’s, seeing what happened as wrong. He vows never to belt his own kids.

My H reports, though, that when tempted he’d get a belt, fold it in half, crack it in the air above his own head. He never laid a belt to any of the 5 boys, although he had ample provocation!

I wonder if he wasn’t doing that belt-crackle move as a way to harness and redirect his own anger. If it helped him break the cycle, more power to him.

I admire my FIL for deprogramming himself from belt-whipping his own 5 rascal boys. I consider it a strength of FIL’s character to change that pattern. The 5 boys also understood the belt-crackle overhead meant nothing other than “emphasis” to show how far they had transgressed. It wasn’t a real threat to them in any way because they knew the whole context and it never landed on anyone, either.