Conversation

All "strict" parenting is abusive. A primary focus on controlling children instead of working with & living with them in ways that respect them as people, is only ever going to be on a spectrum of "bad" to "worse."

There seems to be a lot of focus on differentiating "good" strict parenting (supposedly not abusive) and "bad" strict parenting (abusive), when any variation is wildly authoritarian and worthy of condemnation.

The abuse of children is absolutely endemic. It's the norm. Which means MOST parenting is, to some extent, also abusive.

In the same way that men must be explicitly AGAINST patriarchy to do good, non-engagement with gendered oppression means participating in it, so too adults must be ACTIVELY opposed to the oppression of children in order to not engage in normalized abuse of children.