She had me firmly in one hand, a huge leather strap in the otherhand and a truly menacing look in her eye. My mother had received areport that I had misbehaved on the way home from school.
Assessing mine as a truly hazardous situation, I begannegotiating my way out of the path of that strap by explaining mymother's source had to have been mistaken, and in any event, I knewfar better than to do such a thing and would surely never do itagain, even though I hadn't actually done the deed in the firstplace.
We spent a fair amount of time as children dodging my parents'leather strap. What it would do if it landed on your hide is stillnot a favorite subject of mine. I only bring it up because there isa new round of handwringing going on about the decline in integrityso visible today in America.
A Marine colonel and a Navy admiral speak boldly of their lieson television. Wall Street financiers with huge incomes are indictedfor illegal insider trading. Daily some new case of embezzlementcomes to light.
Some say the trouble started when the thrashing and skinning ofmy mother's and father's generation went out of style in favor of thecuddling and coddling of the 1950s and '60s. The question in the'80s is: Whither personal integrity and how do we restore it?
That question leads many to suggest the problem is the lack ofdiscipline in the home and schools. Beat the little brats up alittle, the corporal punishment argument goes, and people will growup to respect the law more.
Whenever I hear such arguments or see people beating orbelittling children in the hope of changing their behavior, I despairanew. Nothing could be more counterproductive. Violence againstchildren does not produce better children. It produces deviouschildren who learn how to avoid getting hit.
What, then, produces good behavior in children? Is it corporalpunishment? Bruno Bettelheim, the distinguished University ofChicago psychologist, put it well some years ago: "The fundamentalissue is not punishment at all but the development of morality - thatis, the creation of conditions that not only allow but stronglyinduce a child to wish to be a moral, disciplined person. If wesucceed in attaining this goal, then there is no reason to think ofpunishment."
And the key to what the child will do and think will depend onwhat she or he sees the parents do. Mind you, not what the parentspreach, but what they do and are.
Dr. Bettelheim, now retired, and other authorities onpersonality formation say it is impossible to live by one set ofvalues and teach your children to live by another set.
A study in Sweden supports the argument that it is thevalues with which we are raised that determine how we behave. Itexamined two sets of juveniles, one that had trouble with the law,one that led successful lives.
Only one thing was different between the two groups, as Dr.Bettelheim reported it. The youngsters "who behaved well tended tohave parents who were themselves responsible, upright andself-disciplined - who lived in accord with their values and invitedtheir children to follow suit."
That brings me back to my parents and their strap. Even thoughwe children feared their wrath, the truth of the matter is theirwrath was rare. It was also quite memorable.
Most important, their strap was irrelevant. We didn't need astrap to help us to admire our parents and adhere to their values.They thought so only because that was the common wisdom of theirtime.
We followed their values because they were warm, decent peoplewho loved their children and were loved in return. That turns out tobe the only morals lesson that really matters.
Robert Maynard is editor, publisher and president of the Tribuneof Oakland, Calif. His column is distributed by Universal PressSyndicate.
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