The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio - By Steven Pinker Page 0,261

possible. DeMause writes of medieval Europe:That children with devils in them had to be beaten goes without saying. A panoply of beating instruments existed for that purpose, from cat-o’-nine tails and whips to shovels, canes, iron rods, bundles of sticks, the discipline (a whip made of small chains), the goad (shaped like a cobbler’s knife, used to prick the child on the head or hands) and special school instruments like the flapper, which had a pear-shaped end and a round hole to raise blisters. The beatings described in the sources were almost always severe, involved bruising and bloodying of the body, began in infancy, were usually erotically tinged by being inflicted on bare parts of the body near the genitals and were a regular part of the child’s daily life.157

Severe corporal punishment was common for centuries. One survey found that in the second half of the 18th century, 100 percent of American children were beaten with a stick, whip, or other weapon.158 Children were also liable to punishment by the legal system; a recent biography of Samuel Johnson remarks in passing that a seven-year-old girl in 18th-century England was hanged for stealing a petticoat.159 Even at the turn of the 20th century, German children “were regularly placed on a red-hot iron stove if obstinate, tied to their bedposts for days, thrown into cold water or snow to ‘harden’ them, [and] forced to kneel for hours every day against the wall on a log while the parents ate and read.”160 During toilet training many children were tormented with enemas, and at school they were “beaten until [their] skin smoked.”

The harsh treatment was not unique to Europe. The beating of children has been recorded in ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome, China, and Aztec Mexico, whose punishments included “sticking the child with thorns, having their hands tied and then being stuck with pointed agave leaves, whippings, and even being held over a fire of dried axi peppers and being made to inhale the acrid smoke.”161 DeMause notes that well into the 20th century, Japanese children were subjected to “beating and burning of incense on the skin as routine punishments, cruel bowel training with constant enemas, . . . kicking, hanging by the feet, giving cold showers, strangling, driving a needle into the body, cutting off a finger joint.”162 (A psychoanalyst as well as a historian, deMause had plenty of material with which to explain the atrocities of World War II.)

Children were subjected to psychological torture as well. Much of their entertainment was filled with reminders that they might be abandoned by parents, abused by stepparents, or mutilated by ogres and wild animals. Grimm’s fairy tales were just a few of the advisories that may be found in children’s literature of the misfortunes that can befall a careless or disobedient child. English babies, for example, were soothed to sleep with a lullaby about Napoleon:Baby, baby, if he hears you,

As he gallops past the house,

Limb from limb at once he’ll tear you,

Just as pussy tears a mouse.

And he’ll beat you, beat you, beat you,

And he’ll beat you all to pap,

And he’ll eat you, eat you, eat you,

Every morsel, snap, snap, snap.163

A recurring archetype in children’s verse is the child who commits a minor slipup or is unjustly blamed for one, whereupon his stepmother butchers him and serves him for dinner to his unwitting father. In a Yiddish version, the victim of one such injustice sings posthumously to his sister:Murdered by my mother,

Eaten by my father.

And Sheyndele, when they were done

Sucked the marrow from my bones

And threw them out the window.164

Why would any parents torture, starve, neglect, and terrify their own children? One might naïvely think that parents would have evolved to nurture their children without stinting, since having viable offspring is the be-all and endall of natural selection. Children too ought to submit to their parents’ guidance without resistance, since it is offered for their own good. The naïve view predicts a harmony between parent and child, since each “wants” the same thing—for the child to grow up healthy and strong enough to have children of its own.

It was Trivers who first noticed that the theory of natural selection predicts no such thing.165 Some degree of conflict between parent and offspring is rooted in the evolutionary genetics of the family. Parents have to apportion their investment (in resources, time, and risk) across all their children, born and unborn. All things being equal, every offspring is equally valuable, though each benefits from parental investment