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CDC: Majority of U.S. adults had troubled childhoods


[font="Book Antiqua"][color="Red"]Col, Roy Mustang[/color][/font]

Not surprised. I imagine the statistics would actually be similar to 100 years ago, only we now term those childhoods differently.

Wow... pretty sad, but honestly it's not all that shocking. But even though it's not that shocking, I think that I'm a tiny bit surprised that the statistics are *that* high... I just never thought that there'd be so many people who could relate to me...

that percentage is gonna grow

armeckthefirst (post: 1445842) wrote:that percentage is gonna grow

So, uh, got anything to back up your statement there?

I don't believe that people today are any more or less inclined to be abusive than 60 years ago. But back then, people believed that what we would term abuse.... wasn't. (For instance, my aunt's left hand was nearly broken by her teacher because her teach caught her writing left-handed. This was considered perfectly acceptable to the school and her classmates. Her parents were a different matter, though!)

The amount might rise because of how we define abuse changes- again, I give the example of my aunt and her hand. We consider more things abusive now, and that definition might grow as we change as a society. And there are different levels of abuse- some people would consider their siblings calling them fat or stupid a few times abuse. Obviously this is a far cry from being beaten every day and locked in a closet with no food.

The "traditional" way of parenting/disciplining is considered abusive nowadays (for the most part I agree with that assessment). So it's no surprise that the stats would appear to be higher now than they were in the past.

Atria35 (post: 1445849) wrote:So, uh, got anything to back up your statement there?

by "troubled" i didn't just mean abuse, it also meant they had broken families, and i think the divorce rate will climb. this is just an opinion/prediction.

armeckthefirst (post: 1445857) wrote:by "troubled" i didn't just mean abuse, it also meant they had broken families, and i think the divorce rate will climb. this is just an opinion/prediction.

Ah. Gotcha.

Atria35 (post: 1445859) wrote:Ah. Gotcha.

other than the fact that more often that not i meet kids with divorced, or about to be divorced parents, i don't have much to back up that statement. is really is just an opinion/prediction

armeckthefirst (post: 1445868) wrote:other than the fact that more often that not i meet kids with divorced, or about to be divorced parents, i don't have much to back up that statement. is really is just an opinion/prediction

Ah, okay. Yeah I was just wondering why you'd make a statement like that, too.

Anywho, I know what you guys mean when we state exactly what's termed as "abuse". And honestly, I think you're onto something there. I know at least one person who had a teacher who hit him for no good reason, but back when he was in school, teachers were allowed to do that. Nowadays, even parents giving a child a spanking for misbehaving could be considered "abuse"... So I think that'd be the biggest reason why more and more people are claiming to have been abused these days.

Personally, I don't really know if I'd say the statistic is gonna grow. I mean, it might for awhile... but after a time, I think people might start learning from the mistakes of others and try to get better. I know people who have troubled childhoods (and am one of these people myself) and have seen what it's done to their own lives and self-esteem, so they strive to be better than their parents, teachers, or whoever made their childhood troubled.

And as one who's studied psych on and off for a few years, I can say that the percentage of people who strive to do better than what they were given is actually sky high compared to what society believes. When I took a college psych class a few years back, I learned that the idea that abused children typically become abusers has been discovered false. I believe it's true that abusers typically were abused, but abused children typically don't become abusers. According to statistics found in the study (whose name escapes me since it's been about 2 years since I took the class), only about 1/3 of abused children will repeat what was done to them. The others typically seek out the help they know they need, or come to fear/hate the rest of society and try to alienate themselves as much as possible.

The majority of children have had troubled adulthoods. ▬_▬

Lol Rusty

I can't say I'm surprised by this...though I think statistics may be higher now due to more awareness and characterization of abuse. In older times it wasn't considered wrong to beat your wife or rape someone either. In some parts of the world, it still isn't. Just more proof (not that we need it) that we live in a broken world.

Well a lot of it comes from a position of privilege. When you're top dog, you make the rules, and people either follow your rules or they get hurt. Like the spousal abuse thing. Throughout most of history, males have been dominant, so they got to do what they wanted, and the worst part is that in places like the US, some used the Bible to perpetuate their evil. So that's how you got "Well she's MY wife and she's submissive to me, and so if she needs to be smacked around to learn that then that's my right!" This was even further exacerbated by other males who would tell the woman "No, you have to obey your husband and divorce is wrong so you'd better obey him because he's above you."

Fortunately, as women's rights gained steam, males lost a bit of their privilege (only some though, males are still pretty dominant in today's society) and so women who were being smacked around could say "This is abuse, and I don't deserve to be treated like this, and I have options other than putting up with it."

What really bothers me is the appeal to "tradition" to try and say abuse is okay. For example, the whole "Well my dad beat me and that's just how dads did things back then, which makes it okay for me to beat my child, it's not abuse it's discipline!" which sounds just like the whole "Yeah I punched my wife and gave her a black eye but she didn't make dinner right so I was disciplining her." Or look at the Middle East and their problems with child marriage (a form of child abuse) being held up as "tradition." Appealing to tradition to perpetuate abuse is sickening to me.

Kunoichi (post: 1445993) wrote:I can't say I'm surprised by this...though I think statistics may be higher now due to more awareness and characterization of abuse. In older times it wasn't considered wrong to beat your wife or rape someone either. In some parts of the world, it still isn't. Just more proof (not that we need it) that we live in a broken world.

Very true. Back in the Roman times, people didn't really even care if the head of the household was abusive. He even held power of life and death to the ones in his house... So he could've beaten or killed his wife, kids, or servants, and it'd just be considered "normal".

Needless to say, I'm glad that our culture is at least a little more aware of *that* aspect of ancient society and how wrong it was...