Posted by DaisyM on March 6, 2004, at 15:06:19
In reply to Question for everyone on odd parenting, posted by Elle2021 on March 6, 2004, at 2:44:28
As someone who works directly with this age population i would say this was Odd, unnecessary and throws up many red flags. However, the saving grace may be that the dad openly admits it and explains his reasons for it. Many parents do seemingly odd things with their children until you understand their background or motivation. Especially if sexual abuse of children is really far off their radar screen, they would not stop to consider how their behavior might "look" in retrospect.
Like the dad who place his hand just inside his daughter's wasteband. This was a common thing for guys to do when holding onto their girlfriend, "hook" their finger or thumb. IF this became a habit and no one pointed it out, the dad may have just continued it out of comfort. If NOTHING else happened, and the child didn't feel uncomfortable at the time, I wouldn't consider this abuse. (I'm not arguing it was or it wasn't, just using the example).
Just look at spanking. We could classify this as abuse, especially in this day and age. (I hate spanking, just for the record and advocate against it.) But, many of us who were "just" spanked back in the 60s did not consider ourselves abused. If we now relook at this and reclassify our parents as abusers, what does that do to the existing relationships? Not that things shouldn't sometimes be relooked at. It is that some parenting is/was bad parenting, not intential abuse. It is just really complicated.
poster:DaisyM
thread:321016
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040303/msgs/321170.html