If family violence teaches children that might makes right at home, how will we hope to cure the futile impulse to solve worldly conflicts with force?
Interpretation
Family violence instills harmful lessons in children about power and conflict resolution.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin's quote emphasizes the detrimental effects of family violence on children's perceptions of power dynamics and conflict resolution. If children learn that using might is a valid way to assert dominance at home, it raises concerns about their future behavior and attitudes towards conflicts in the broader world, suggesting a cycle of violence that extends beyond the family unit into society at large.
In practice
During a community meeting on domestic violence prevention.
When a family is free of abuse and oppression, it can be the place where we share our deepest secrets and stand the most exposed, a place where we learn to feel distinct without being better, - and sacrifice for others without losing ourselves.
When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition.
Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.
Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.
There is no job more important than parenting. This I believe.
Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality - collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other.
My father died beside trees on iron rails... He had 77 dollars on him at the time, and we used the money for Thai takeout because, as my friend Julie says about times like this, 'You still have to eat.'
My mom is one of those people that you feel honored to meet. And no matter who you are, you fall in love with her because she is spiritual, she's inspiring, she's strong, she's funny, she's creative, she's talented... she's everything that I want to be.
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