Meanings in Reprimand and Respect, Love and Fear

Experiences are layered with meanings. Notions of abuse and violence are useful to des­ignate certain repertoires of social behavior. For those interviewed, these concepts are not so vague as to become inoperative in daily life, nor are they so blurred they cannot be used to make conceptual and moral distinctions.

An important group of respondents (almost half) described their own childhood as hostile and abounding in suffering due to parental abuse. When child abuse was con­fronted with the description of current moods, a significant relationship was found be­tween being abused as a child and describing oneself as an adult who is often nervous or sad. There is also a close statistical relationship between the description of the mood, admitting the need to commit abuse in the current home, and having been abused as a child. Feelings of sadness, distrust, and loss of control thus seem to take root in the vio­lent conditions of family life. In spite of the fact that child abuse meant suffering and in­juries to all respondents, some of them attribute it to special conditions such as stress due to poverty and scarcity, infidelity, disobedience, or drinking.

The notion of seeking to “correct” individuals also has a significant emotional effect. Reprimanding is closely linked to the notion of the “respect” primarily owed parents and secondarily to the male spouse. This permits a better understanding of the contradiction manifested by the majority of the abused, who judged their experience as painful, even unfair, without clear motives, but who nevertheless felt that there was fondness in the re­lationship, and that the intention to reprimand was what moved the parents. Reprimand and respect act precisely as mediation mechanisms, as mitigating factors that help indi­viduals understand experiences that seriously question the love and concern of parents towards their children. Excesses are therefore seen as deviations from the intent to repri­mand, due to circumstantial or personal reasons. In this context, abuse is blamed on igno­rance (the view of the majority), drinking, nervousness or anger, or even on the belief that “that was the way one was reprimanded then.” All these reasons become protective screens for the victims. Acceptance of the intent to reprimand gives rise to respect, which in no way morally legitimates the use of violence, but which permits the experience to be integrated under an essentially ambivalent code.

A smaller segment of the sample, however, recognized a destructive intent in abuse, and blamed it on lack of affection. Behind abuse they saw hatred, animosity, and jeal­ousy. Parents loathed their children for their sex, attitude, or their relation with the other parent or stepparent, or were jealous of their qualities or position in the family. Here the painful experience is more crude and simple in the minds of respondents, but some con­tinue to question the reason for this hatred. Also, a few within the group favored the use of violent punishment when reprimanding, and openly justified it (see Montanez 1996).

The privileged settings for violent interactions at home are those where social control of the family unit is at play. Both manifest and potential behavior matters for the intent to regulate. A considerable number of cases of abuse took place for no apparent reason. Sometimes it was linked to situations where control of the family unit was challenged in very subtle ways, for example with minor tardiness in returning home, slightly rude an­swers, or even small gestures of disrespect. In the dynamics of violent interactions, obe­dience and its opposite, disobedience, are central. As a result, apparently trivial acts judged as disrespectful to parents or spouses unleash excessive reactions such as com­plaints or questions about the conduct of the parent or spouse. Obedience is expected in cases of excessive chores and absurd commands, as are strict compliance with estab­lished time frames and consulting about relationships outside the home; one does not challenge the exercise of domestic control with gestures, words, acts or omissions, but rather one explicitly indicates submission.

“Reprimanding” operates as a cognitive interpretation of the ultimate purpose of the offender, and as such, guides the perceptions of specific interactions.

Now, a still-incipient generation change was detected in the use of the reprimand­respect complex as justification for the use of violence at home. Brutal punishments were suffered mainly by respondents over the age of 30, whereas among the young there was greater influence of a referential system that disapproves of brutal punishments and rec­ognizes the right of children not to be abused. Some of the respondents see this change as confusing, as they now have doubts, not previously considered, about the punishment of children and parental rights. Some even attributed this change to delinquency and vio­lence in society: “Well, since you can no longer correct them...” For the majority, these changes in the reference pattern are experienced ambiguously. On the one hand, the ma­jority regarded dialogue as the proper means to solve interpersonal conflicts at home. On the other hand, although only a few justified the use of violence in reprimanding, many employ it at home, sometimes without motive, and don't see themselves as abusers. The victim's condition as the target of abuse is easily recognized, whereas that of the offender

tries to conceal itself, not only due to social sanctions but mainly because of a still inade­quate use of alternate methods of correction. The broader cognitive framework points to a model for interpersonal relations between the members of a group with unequal posi­tions (parents-children, male-female). It thus constructs a larger concept with which to grasp domestic personal experience as well as a wide range of relations with others, es­pecially those liable to end in open conflict.