What's Wrong with Old School Parenting?
by Angela Scott

As a child of the 1970s whose parents had roots in Louisiana and Oklahoma, I clearly recall having to make the trip to my front yard twice to break off a switch from our towering tree -- picked especially for my lil’ behind. While I can’t dredge up the reasoning for my “big time” whooping, I do remember that I did not like being hit with a switch…or a brush…or a belt…or a telephone cord. No, I wasn’t considered a bad child. Nor do I consider myself an abused child. I was just one of the victims living under the “momma don’t play” academy, where this type of corporal punishment was common practice in most of the homes of my friends, neighbors and family lineage. None of us kids or our young parents knew any better.

According to Dr. Kerby Alvy, a Sherman Oaks, Calif.-based clinical psychologist and expert in child abuse among minorities and the poor, traditional corporal punishment among African Americans originated during slavery. In an effort to prevent “white harm,” black parents would take immediate control by inflicting severe punishment on their children to stop slave owners who would maim, sell or kill slaves when black children misbehaved. While considered a survival method at the time, Alvy says these discipline traditions remained intact throughout the years following slavery, the Jim Crow era, Civil Rights and Black Pride Movements. Today, in Los Angeles County, black children make up 9.5 percent of the population, yet 40 percent of reported child abuse cases are regarding black kids.

“Reported child abuse is skewed towards people living in poverty,” says Alvy. “It’s harder to raise kids in poverty situations. There’s more substance abuse. The other part has to do with some of these cultural issues: you can get reported for hitting your kids. Blacks are at a disadvantage because they have a history of using corporal punishment.” Furthermore, it is a violation in California for any person to inflict injury upon a child that “results in welts, bruises or redness of the skin,” and is punishable by imprisonment in County jail up to one year, or in State Prison up to six years. The end result is a completely broken home where the child gets “locked up” under the judicial system, and the state does the childrearing.

A victim of corporal punishment himself, from his civil engineer Jewish father, Alvy knows there are caring parents of all races and social classes who hit their children. Having counseled families for more than 30 years, Alvy also understands the pressure under which today’s families must cope: incarceration, gang violence, unemployment and lack of education. But, the child advocate doesn’t believe a whooping is necessary to gain cooperation. As founder of the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing child abuse, Alvy created Effective Black Parenting, a skill-building program designed specifically for African Americans. More than 500,000 parents of African American children in 44 states have used Alvy’s approach to discipline.

“We created an achievement orientation to raising African American kids by using what we developed, the Pyramid of Success for Black Children. It’s based upon five essential characteristics: (1) love and understanding; (2) pride in blackness; (3) self-discipline; (4) good school habits; and (5) good health habits,” states Alvy of his nationally recognized and award-winning program. Effective Black Parenting teaches us as black parents to embrace our history and spirituality, and to pass that pride on to our children through praise discipline and other positive esteem-building methods.

“You praise that child saying, ‘Jamal, I really like it that you put the books on the table.’ And for those black parents who approach those kids positively, it reinforces and lets the kids know that they’re on the right path,” Alvy explains. He says that parents should examine how they communicate with their child. Are you putting down your child’s looks because he is too dark or she is lily white? He calls this the “dark” side of blackness, where the oppressed takes on the role of the oppressor and victimizes those weaker.


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