CUBA: Many Parents Continue Practicing ‘Tough Love’

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Feb 17 2003 (IPS) - Mariela Gómez believes that her parents’ harsh child-rearing approach was the way she became ”honest and hard-working,” and she herself employs ”tough love” in raising her seven-year-old daughter, who definitely obeys her, but avoids looking her in the eyes.

”This is my house and this is my daughter,” said Gómez, a 37- year-old civil engineer who says a good scolding and the occasional beating – ”without going to extremes” – are the best child-rearing tools.

Like all children in this socialist island nation, her daughter has guaranteed educational and health coverage free of charge and is vaccinated against more than 10 diseases, while crime levels are low in Cuba – all of which means the dangers she might face are not in the street, but in her own home.

Although no reliable figures are available, studies and anecdotal evidence indicate that child abuse – ranging from threats and verbal aggression through sexual abuse and blows to severe physical injuries that can result in death – lurks behind the doors of many homes in this country of 11.2 million, regardless of the educational levels of the parents.

But the problem is largely unrecognised, at both the individual and public level.

The only data available on deaths linked to child abuse is found in a study on the cause of death among infants under the age of one year in Havana between 1989 and 1993, which reported that 42 percent of the deaths that occurred outside of hospitals in that period were the result of intentional mistreatment or neglect.

The lack of precise statistics on domestic violence against children is a global problem, according to the United Nations children’s fund (UNICEF).

An estimated six million children and adolescents suffer domestic abuse – and 80,000 a year die as a result – in Latin America and the Caribbean, reports the UN agency.

”The view by which a man sees a woman as his property is going out of fashion, but the belief that children are the property of their parents is still widespread,” says Iliana Artiles, with the governmental National Centre for Sex Education.

A study carried out in 2000 among eight to 10-year-olds in a health district in the city of Santiago de Cuba, 850 kms east of Havana, found clear evidence of child abuse in local households.

Of the children surveyed, 56 percent said they had been physically abused, 55 percent said they had been the target of emotional abuse, and 16 percent had suffered neglect.

The youngsters said it was mainly their mothers who shook or hit them or threw things at them, although their fathers and other guardians did so as well to a lesser degree.

To explain the way they treated their children, the adults interviewed pointed to stress, family conflicts, frustration, the beatings they themselves had received as children, chronic illnesses and tough socioeconomic conditions.

The study authors, a group of experts in medicine, biostatistics and psychology, concluded that ”family traditions and rules obscure, cover up and justify child abuse.”

Artiles says that both mothers and fathers are abusive in Cuba, although women tend to spend more time with their children, are more closely involved in their care, and enter into more frequent conflicts with them.

”Mothers react violently partly in response to the heavy domestic, labour and child-rearing burdens they carry,” according to Artiles, the lead author of the book ”Violence and Sexuality”, published in 2001.

A glance or spoken warning is sometimes enough for fathers to discipline their children, says Artiles, who points to the typical phrase ”just wait till your father gets home…”, so often uttered by mothers.

A poll conducted among 80 adolescents in a Havana school in 2000 found that 88 percent of respondents were aware of the existence of physical abuse, and all of those who performed poorly in school had been mistreated.

”I won’t deny that sometimes I have felt like hitting her, but I always control myself. I have always preferred to talk things out with my daughter, ever since she was little,” said Nadia Nodar, the mother of a 13-year-old.

But Nodar, a 40-year-old office worker, is aware that she is atypical. ”The mothers of my daughter’s friends see me as an oddity or look at me as if I were crazy. For most, it is easier to just impose their will by force.”

According to Artiles, one of the myths that keeps the problem invisible is the idea that children belong to their parents, who thus have the right to raise them as they see fit. To justify their actions, many adults simply contend that ”he’s my son” or ”I gave birth to her and I raise her as I see best.”

Popular sayings like ”beat it into them” or ”spare the rod and spoil the child” are an ingrained part of family culture in Cuba and are passed from one generation to another.

But Artiles warns that physical punishment merely reproduces a culture of violence. ”Since many parents learned that is the best way to raise children, that is how they discipline their own.”