by Lisa H Warren

Created on: December 28, 2008

What has happened to discipline for children is a matter of a "pendulum" having swung too far. There are two likely contributing factors for this: One is that many people of past generations grew up with parents and teachers who used harsh discipline (verbal, physical, or both) on them; and as a result, grew up vowing not to treat their own children that way. The other is that today experts (and, in turn, many parents) have a better understanding of the negative effects that harsh discipline has on children. As a result, these two factors may have come along at the same time over the last several decades - combining, and leading to the general trend away from harsh forms of discipline.

Whether it is through better understanding in the field of psychology, or as a result of recalling being a child treated harshly, more and more people in recent years realize that children are not "evil" or "bad" when they do something they shouldn't do (or don't do something they should). More and more parents now realize that children's immature development will inevitably lead to any number of behaviors, and using harsh discipline for the "normal mess-ups" of childhood is not the right thing to do. The trouble over the last few decades has been that, in their attempts to correct what was once bad parenting behavior, parents of younger generations have taken things too far in the other direction.

The Post-War Baby Boom generation may have been the first generation of children to have parents so freely value the concept of childhood and encourage the preservation of a "happy and innocent" one. The widespread, 1950's phenomenon of the emphasis American World War II generation parents placed on family and childhood was a first in history. Often having been raised in an era when children were routinely mistreated in one way or another, parents of this generations often decided to do things very differently. Even though there continued to be some harsh treatment of children, the degree to which it occurred was not the same as it had been for earlier generations. As a result, there was a high enough percentage of Baby Boomers raised without harsh discipline to view it very differently. Of those with less reasonable parents, some may have been influenced by societal beliefs. Others may have grown up still believing there is no way to teach children right from wrong without treating them harshly. Still, Baby Boom children raised by "kinder, gentler" parents came in numbers large enough

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