“Cruelty towards the child has always been carried out in the name of upbringing and for the child's own good.”Alice Miller · Am Anfang war Erziehung (Pentru binele tău) · 1980 · Alice Miller, «Am Anfang war Erziehung» (1980), tradusă în engleză ca «For Your Own Good» — redare a tezei centrale, necolaționată pe ediție
Violence against a child is passed on not by the blow but by the agreement demanded of them afterwards.
Miller read the child-rearing manuals of the German-speaking world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and found a coherent system, which she called poisonous pedagogy. Its rules: the child's will must be broken as early as possible; obedience must be obtained without the child understanding the reason; the parent is always right; and everything done is for the child's own good. The part that interested her is not the blow but what is required after it — the child must not be upset, must ask forgiveness, sometimes must say thank you. That is how one learns that the person who loves you is the person who hurts you, and that your anger at them is illegitimate. The anger does not vanish; it changes address, towards the weaker or towards the self. Romanian has a version of brutal concision, the beating is torn from heaven, which does exactly what Miller describes: it moves violence into the sacred register, where it can no longer be argued with. Miller was criticised for monocausality — explaining too much through one mechanism — but the description of the cultural justification has held.
Why it matters Because it shows why the argument «I was beaten too and I turned out fine» is not evidence but a symptom: it is precisely the agreement the system requires in order to reproduce itself for one more generation.