I am in no way trying to invalidate the anguish that the author or people in this thread have suffered. I simply want to share my experience with having parents that beat me in a culture where it is commonplace.
I grew up in a Muslim country where I and everyone else I knew received the same level of physical punishment as part of the general parenting strategy. Some call this normalized child abuse - when I moved to a Western country for work and discussed this type of upbringing with others, they claimed I was abused and oblivious ("repressing"), and they seemed shocked at the fact that it didn't bother me or that it hasn't affected my relationship with my family. If I had been the only person receiving beatings and everyone else at my school was telling me I was being abused, I may have also deemed my father to be a monster, but I assumed the punishments were justified.
Someone may take this to imply that whether you see your parent as a monster or not depends on the context (on whether it is culturally acceptable or not) and that there is nothing inherently damaging about receiving beatings. Others may conclude that cultures where beating children is acceptable are barbaric and their children do indeed suffer lifelong trauma but manage to cope (if they do not seem to have been affected). I don't have enough data to draw any conclusions myself.
However, and this is my man point, a charitable view of the issue may at least make a distinction between parents who are intentionally hurting their children because of their own issues, and parents who believe physical punishment (or any form of a strict, stern upbringing) is a valid method for raising your children. Is it possible that the father of the OP, being Chinese, thought he was doing the right thing at the time?
One interesting thing I noted is that even in Western countries, beatings are more common and accepted in certain groups. Some Black and Hispanic friends of mine have joked about how hard their parents beat them, but I have yet to meet a White person who thinks of beating children as anything more than abuse.
I grew up in a Muslim country where I and everyone else I knew received the same level of physical punishment as part of the general parenting strategy. Some call this normalized child abuse - when I moved to a Western country for work and discussed this type of upbringing with others, they claimed I was abused and oblivious ("repressing"), and they seemed shocked at the fact that it didn't bother me or that it hasn't affected my relationship with my family. If I had been the only person receiving beatings and everyone else at my school was telling me I was being abused, I may have also deemed my father to be a monster, but I assumed the punishments were justified.
Someone may take this to imply that whether you see your parent as a monster or not depends on the context (on whether it is culturally acceptable or not) and that there is nothing inherently damaging about receiving beatings. Others may conclude that cultures where beating children is acceptable are barbaric and their children do indeed suffer lifelong trauma but manage to cope (if they do not seem to have been affected). I don't have enough data to draw any conclusions myself.
However, and this is my man point, a charitable view of the issue may at least make a distinction between parents who are intentionally hurting their children because of their own issues, and parents who believe physical punishment (or any form of a strict, stern upbringing) is a valid method for raising your children. Is it possible that the father of the OP, being Chinese, thought he was doing the right thing at the time?
One interesting thing I noted is that even in Western countries, beatings are more common and accepted in certain groups. Some Black and Hispanic friends of mine have joked about how hard their parents beat them, but I have yet to meet a White person who thinks of beating children as anything more than abuse.