Mark KennedyI remember the sting of my father’s belt. I don’t dwell on it, but I remember it. It’s hard to say now, 50 years after the fact, whether those belt whippings were good things or bad things. I lean toward bad.
They taught me obedience (an underrated life skill), but they also created an emotional distance between my father and me that lasted well into my 30s. Spanking children certainly wasn’t considered a bad thing in the 1960s. About 90 percent of baby boomers say they were spanked as kids, according to an August 2013 Harris survey.
Furthermore, I’m pretty sure most Southern parents in the middle of the 20th century considered it child neglect if you did not spank your kids. Even today, about 80 percent of American parents think spanking children is “sometimes appropriate,” according to the survey. So to say any physical punishment involving a child is abusive is still a minority view.
If it could be administered in a precisely measured, age-appropriate way by a calm, dispassionate adult, then perhaps corporal punishment makes sense as part of a disciplinary toolkit. I’ve just never seen it work that way.
What brings this to mind, of course, are the recent tribulations of Minnesota Vikings’ running back Adrian Peterson, who has been charged in Texas with injuring his 4-year-old son during a “switching” earlier this year. Whatever your view of corporal punishment, seeing photos of the bleeding switch marks on the little boy’s body is unsettling.
Peterson, who admits to administering the discipline, says he was just carrying on a family tradition and teaching his young son right from wrong. (The boy had apparently pushed a sibling in a spat over a video game.) Peterson has expressed remorse that the child was injured, and many have come to his defense.
Texas law draws the line on corporal punishment at “bodily injury,” and thus the indictment. After a one-week deactivation by the Vikings, Peterson — one of the NFL’s premiere players — was scheduled to be back in the line-up today when the Vikings play the Saints in New Orleans, but on Wednesday, the team reversed course and suspended Peterson, telling him he had to stay away from the team while he addresses child abuse charges.
When the story first broke, I couldn’t help but remember an odd fact about Peterson. In story after story over the years, I’ve read that Peterson is famous for administering a painful, vice-like handshake to other men. When quizzed about this odd habit, Peterson says he was taught by his father to look a man in the eye and to offer a firm handshake, that’s all. Wink, wink.
OK.
That he has interpreted this as a license to willfully inflict pain — as he clearly knows by now is the case — tells me something about this dude. In an athletic meritocracy like the NFL, establishing physical dominance is more or less a given. I get that. “Impose your will” is one of the favorite exhortations of NFL coaches.
Peterson’s mistake was not being self-aware enough to realize that it’s virtually impossible for six-foot, one-inch, 217-pound mountain of muscle like himself to impose his will on a 4-year-old without unintended consequences. I would tell Peterson that those marks on his son’s body are probably the least of those consequences.
I’m sure that when my father belt whipped me he believed he was teaching me right from wrong. More specifically, as a former Army sergeant, he thought he was teaching me to follow orders — a skill that can be the difference in life or death on the battlefield. The ability to respect authority is one of the enduring virtues of the baby boomer generation; and failure to do so is something we can’t abide in younger generations.
Still, when I was young and needed a father to feel emotionally close to, the belt was always there between us.
I was thinking about this last Sunday in a darkened movie theater, as my 7-year-old son clutched my arm and buried his face into my shoulder during a sad scene in a Disney film. Both of my sons are tenderhearted that way. But then, as a kid, so was I — until one day I wasn’t. I essentially turned off my heart for about 20 years, and only fully recovered it after my father passed away.
To willfully harden a tender heart with a switch or a belt strikes me as a lazy way to teach obedience. Especially if you are an NFL running-back — known as the ultimate tough guy in a tough-guy sport — and your son is only four.
A typical 4-year-old weighs 40 pounds and is 40 inches tall. Keeping that comparison scale in mind, let’s say the next guy Adrian Peterson meets is 11 feet tall, weighs 1,000 pounds and pounds ball-bearings into dust with his fists for a living.
I wonder if Mr. Peterson would smile, extend his hand and apply the old knuckle-breaker handshake?
I doubt it.
By the time my father was nearing death, we had mended fences. Sometimes, our goodbye hugs would last a few extra heartbeats, a physical reconciliation more powerful than words.
I hope Peterson and his son someday share lingering hugs like that. Otherwise, when he is old and weak, Peterson will be the one with scars — on his heart.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.