“Opposing Miller are those who claim that a law forbidding parents to hit their children brings us uncomfortably close to totalitarianism. Many people believe that smacking children remains a private right, and would have grave misgivings if government legislation intruded into an area as sacrosanct as the home. Her answer is emphatic: "You can't claim the right to play with nuclear weapons on your territory because they belong to you. Similarly, society's interests must go before your pleasure and your habits, and the government must defend these interests. “Parents may claim the right to hit children when they are small as though they are property. Yet as soon as those children become violent delinquents or drug abusers the same parents are eager to turn the problem over to society. The anonymous taxpayer has to fund the hospitals and prisons these once so eagerly disciplined teenagers will need."
"The countless letters I received later informed me about the huge territory of suffering in childhood that almost all of us have endured and almost all of us keep DENYING over their whole lives by paying for this denial with their health. Or by letting others, mostly their own children, to pay. Hence over the 30 years, I came to understand that to heal the wounds stemming from child abuse we must give up this denial by overcoming the fear of being punished again and take the risk of feeling not only the grief but also and above all the RAGE about the way we were treated in childhood." Alice Miller
