Spare The Child: The Religious Roots Of Punishment And The Psychological Impact Of Physical Abuse Book

An extraordinary book in breadth and in scope. Greven's book, though 25 years old, is still startlingly relevant. He takes aim at the historical roots of physical abuse of children in American history, tracing it back to the Puritan theology of our ancestors. Some of this information was new to me and I grew up in a household that celebrated the Puritans. The first two sections of the book are on the history and the theology of religious physical abuse (and here he shows how Puritan theology in particular was abusive, damaging, and repressive to children), and the third section addresses the behavioral and psychological consequences of physical punishment of children. One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is how he traces physical abuse back to the key theologians in Protestant history, Luther, Calvin, Cotton Mather, and many others were all broken and repressed by their parents, which led to a construction of an emotionally repressive theology that further abused generations after them. Vital reading.