It may sound strange, but it is a fact, that there are very few parents who have never beaten their children, or have never thought of doing so, howsoever deeply and dearly they may love them.

Even among the educated people, very few can control the tendency to beat their children. As for the illiterate people, this is the only method by which they can satisfy the curiosity of the children, curb their feelings, get rid of their exuberance and suppress their initiative.

When any person acts in this manner towards himself, it is termed as ‘suicide’, and is considered a crime, but the same behaviour towards children is described simply as thrashing and society does not take any effective steps to check it. Only fatal injury to the child is considered as a crime but the law does not go any further than that. According to social workers and psychologists, there is no basic difference between the two patterns of behaviour—suicide and thrashing of children. Beating one’s own children is nothing but suicide, because the reason in either case is frustration and self-contempt and the result is also the same—the feeling of insult and masochism. Children are beaten to punish, and suicide also is a form of punishing oneself.

In India, this problem is acute. Studies conducted during recent years has revealed that young women do become mothers, but mentally do not develop the qualities of motherhood. The child is therefore badly neglected.

Often, it so happens that mothers flare up whenever the child demands anything. They take a tight hold of the child, scold him and shout at him. Their idea of attending to the child is not to show love, but always to terrorise him, so that the child may always visualise his mother with a face red with anger.

If the child refuses to eat, most mothers react as if they have been abused. There is the case of a child whose mother would hold her clenched fist as close as an inch from his face whenever he cried. She would also tie a rope around his belly and tighten it.

Another woman flared up because her two-year-old scattered about the halwa she had prepared for him with great love. This particular woman had the peculiar habit of hitting the table with the spoon when she was angry.

Generally, it has been found that the childhood of such parents has been spent very badly. They did not get love themselves, and do not give it to their children.

A psychiatric social worker says that it has been found that such mothers, and sometimes, fathers too, have their limitations. They do not know how to control their anger or to divert their minds when they are angry. They do not have the capacity to get rid of tension. Their only urge then is to beat the child. If they ask the child to do something and he does not agree, they do not try to coax or cajole him, because all this requires time, labour and ability. So they resort to beating the child; this seems easier. It is not only uneducated parents but educated ones who also beat and scold their children. Experience has shown that parents who beat children belong to all age groups.

There is the case of one particular woman. She was an M. A. and had one child, two years old. She had been a very good student. As soon as she completed her studies, she was married and the whole pattern of her life changed. She remained idle most of the time. Her major occupation was lying in bed and reading detective novels.

Her child was also an idler and very naughty. The husband of the woman used to come home late because he was doing a part-time job after office hours. She used to remain irritated and gave vent to her anger on her husband and the child.

She used to beat the child. She knew that she was being very harsh on the child, but still she continued to beat him. It is also observed that when the child cried, the mother got apprehensive because she thinks that the neighbours might get the impression that he is being beaten. The reaction is that she beat the child all the more.

Psychologists believe that parents who beat their children see the personality of their own mothers reflected in them. They themselves have been deprived of love and take revenge on their children. When the child does something they do not like, the parents feel as if they are being neglected once again, just as they were neglected in childhood by their parents.

A woman admitted that whenever her child cried, she felt very bad and lost her temper. On such occasions, she felt no love ever for her child. Another woman, who has a small daughter, cannot stand the crying of her child. Whenever the child cries, the woman virtually throws her down and herself goes to the other room, so that she may have to beat her more.

There is a couple who has three children. They love the last one, but not the other two. They beat the first two as and when they choose.

As the children grow, their requirements also grow, but the parents cannot fulfil them. They get irritated and beat the children in order to conceal their weakness. This is a problem neither for a doctor nor a lawyer, because the root cause of this problem is social and psychological. There was a time when parents used to sell their child or make a sacrifice of him or her. They even used to give away the child to someone.